Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Don’t you just hate it when your printer messes up? I most certainly do. Every once in a while, a document gets stuck in the spooler system and 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.

You may of course unplug the printer, cut power and pray that this will let you to delete the stuck file from the queue. However, Sometimes even that won’t do you any good. What then? Do you reboot the computer?

Well, There might just be one more thing to try, first…

Purge Stalled Print Jobs … 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 Address field)
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)
4. Now go back to the Services Window and Start the Print Spooler Service.

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

About Thomas

Computer geek from the age of 7, which amounts to 30 years of computer experience. From the early days (when every computer company had their own OS) of DOS, Windows 1.0 through Seven...

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