A Permanent Solution to Delete Stuck Print Jobs in Windows

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Summary: We will create a command script file and save it. Whenever the print jobs stuck, we will simply run that file.

Keeping a printer at home is very much convenient and helps a lot. But as printers can’t be powered by UPS, we have to face problems when suddenly current goes while printing something. And the computer keeps spooling files in queue. When we try to cancel or delete the printing job, it got stuck. Windows simply fails to delete the ongoing printing jobs.

This is a general problem that printer users face. When electricity comes, you wish to clear the queue and enqueue some new jobs, but you can’t. The spooler and OS are helpless in overcoming this problem. Even, restarting the computer doesn’t works.

There is a technique suggested by Microsoft to deal with the problem. This is a simple solution and you need to create this only once. After that whenever you need to cancel/delete stuck print jobs, you can do with a single click and problem dissolved in seconds.

Open Notepad and paste these lines in the file:

net stop spooler
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.shd
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.spl
net start spooler

Go to File->Save As… and select “All Files” as Save as type.

Put “C:\DeletePrintJobs.cmd” in the File name box and Save.

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Now, we have prepared the command script file for use. Whenever you got stuck with your printing queue, do the following:

Open run box by pressing Win+R key and put the same filename that we have created, “C:\DeletePrintJobs.cmd” and press OK.

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Now a Command Prompt window will open and do the rest task for you and automatically closes. It will delete all printing jobs currently in the queue. When it goes off, you are ready with an empty list of printing jobs.

Note: There is very little chance that after using this method, you are unable to print anything. In such case please restart your computer and then try printing again.

Do you have a printer and had faced this problem before?