How to forcefully clear all jobs from a print queue

Posted on March 11, 2007 at 1:12 am

All administrators should know how to clear the print queue in Windows when all the jobs get “stuck” and none of the jobs can be deleted. This will save you from having to restart a server (which is bad!).

In order to get the printing services back up and running, follow these steps:

1. Go to Start, Control Panel and Administrative Tools. Double click on Services icon.

2. Scroll down to the Print Spooler service and right click on it and select Stop. In order to do this, you need to be logged in as Administrator. At this point, no one will be able to print anything on any of the printers that are being hosted on this server.

3. Next you need to go to the following directory: C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS. Delete all the files in this folder. This will clear all print queues (it’s a good idea to first make sure there are no other print jobs being processed on any of the other printers on the server because doing this step will delete those jobs also)

4. Now you can go back to the Services console and right-click and choose Start for the Print Spooler service!

You can also go to a command prompt and type net stop spooler or net start spooler to start and stop the service.

Good luck!

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