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TIP: Can't Delete Print Jobs

My daughter's in residence at university, a half-hour drive away. So it's not practical to zip over to fix her computer problems. Fortunately, she knows how to do a lot of computer maintenance herself. But yesterday's problem puzzled both her and me.

She wanted to print a document on her brand-new HP printer, but nothing came out. She called, and I told her to delete all pending print jobs. One print job, however, would not delete. I looked on the Internet, and found this is a problem common to Windows XP: the spooler chokes. (The spooler is software that allows printing in the background.)

This solution worked for her:

1. On the taskbar, click Start, and then click Run.

2. Enter the following:

net stop spooler (and hit enter)

3. Delete all files in the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\Spool\Printers

4. Once the spool files are deleted, start the spooler again:

net start spooler

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Comments

Ralph an alternative to this is to go to Control panel>administrative tools, then select services. Find Print spooler, RMB and select stop, then RMB again and select start. Close services, and admin tools and then resume printing.

Well. I had this exact problem with HP printer and XP. The solution is working, thanks a lot! I can now print all my things in time. Thank you.

This worked for me too!

Question for Donovan, what is RMB???

I followed your directions to the letter except pretended the letters "RMB" did not exist in your directions. :-) That worked.

RBM == right mouse button

We were stuck for 3 days until your advice unblocked the printer. Thank you!!

5 Hours of pain.....one lucky search...problem solved in 20 seconds..

ThankYou...Thankyou..Thankyou

Hey, just wanted to add that this fix was a happy end to a very frustrating two days.

Thank you soooo much for posting this information! You are a life saver!

Thank you soo much for helping me. I created 1 bat file to automatically clear up printing jobs.
URL:
http://khang685.googlepages.com/deleteprintingjobs.bat

Very very usefull informations, thanks a lot to all of you my friends!!

Hmm. I have not been so lucky. I deleted the cancelled printing order but still could not print. I often find that the only way to resolve the problem is to shut down the machine and reboot. When Windows launches the printer prints the delayed print order.

Could you explain what is going on?

Very Nice Solution...

well! i did all that but i still have 'empty' documents waiting to be printed!! i'm going maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad with this stupid print queue! everytime i try to print something, there's a new empty document that appears BEFORE the one i want to print! grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Thank You, Thank You, this worked perfect. I have had this problem many times before.

THANK YOU for the bit about the printer spooler. I was about to throw my printer through the window. I knew it could be fixed, but I couldn't figure it out. That worked! Thanks!

You're the best. Thank you, thank you and thank you.

Thank you a lot!

Damnit now I have a new problem. It tells me that I have a document pending but I don't. I can print stuff fine now but the tray icon won't go away!

GREAT! after a week can print a single page!!!

Instructions are clear and worked great! Many thanks from this end also.

The batch file posted at http://khang685.googlepages.com/deleteprintingjobs.bat won't work if there's anything in the Printers folder. Might be better off to just delete anything in there instead of removing the directory and recreating it.

Thanks a million!

Many thanks for the great little tip!

I put your tip on my personal blog at HP http://www.hp.com/blogs/photolink. Thanks again.

This blog does something funny with hyperlinks that are follwed by a period. My blog is at http://www.hp.com/blogs/photolink

wow one of the most useful tip!!! saved me a lot of time!!! thx very very much!

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