Purge Stalled Print Jobs

Don’t you just hate it when your printer mess up ? I most certainly do. Every once in a while, a document get stuck in the spooler system. No documents will print. And if you don’t catch it right away you end up with a stack of documents piling up in your print queue.

Well you can perform this by two way...

1.Manually

First off: Make sure all print jobs are complete and that no new print jobs are being submitted.

1. Open Services.msc (Click the Start Button and type in: “Services” in the search box)
   
Locate the Print Spooler Service, and stop it (Right Click, Choose STOP)
2. Open an explorer window, and navigate to the folder: C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS
   
   (Copy the above URL and paste it in the Explorer Adressfield)
3. Delete the SPL- and SHD-files with the lowest number (which should be the file causing problems). Or to be safe, delete everything.
   (Files in the Printers are named xxxx.spl or xxxx.shd where xxxx is a hexadecimal number)
4. Now go back to the Services Window and Start the Print Spooler Service.

2. The DOS way…

Prefer using the Command Prompt ? OKAY, here’s how:

1. Open the Command Prompt as Adminstrator (Click the Start-button and type CMD, then Right Click CMD.EXE in the search results and choose “Run as Administrator”)
2. Type Net Stop Spooler
   (This will stop the Print Spooler Service)
3. Type  cd\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS
4. Type Del *.* (and Confirm to delete)
5. Type Net Start Spooler to Start the Print Spooler Service again