Even though the world of computing is becoming more portable and internet based, there’s still times when you need a hard copy of something whether it’s a photo or a document, and a printer is the go to hardware. Unfortunately, even printers have their own issues while you’re trying to use them and one of the most common issues is when one of the printing jobs gets stuck in print queue.
Quite often you can’t delete the offending job and it won’t let you print off anything else waiting there behind it. Most people will either disconnect or turn off their printer or reboot the PC to get it to work, but it’s not exactly an ideal solution. The more techie minded people will know there is a solution to the problem by using the Command Prompt to stop the print spooler service, or by creating a batch file, but what’s wrong with having a nice little GUI to save you the hassle?
I must admit, this little utility is a few years old, but it completely passed me by until I came across it a few months ago. As prints getting stuck in the queue are just as relevant now as they were several years ago, the Stalled Printer Repair utility is still very useful to have around.
As is the way with a lot of useful utilities, this one is completely portable with just the standalone executable. Extract it from the zip file, right click and ‘Run as Adminstrator‘.
Using the utility couldn’t be simpler, if there are stuck prints in the queue, the program will tell you. Clicking on ‘Purge Print Jobs‘ will delete all the prints waiting in the queue and freeing up your printer for further printing. Do be aware that all jobs in the queue will be deleted, not just the stuck one.
Obviously, there is no need for you to do so if using this tool, but if you ever want to do a similar thing to the repair tool the manual way, open a command prompt as Administrator and type the following:
net stop spooler
del /Q /F /S “%systemroot%\System32\Spool\Printers\*.*”
net start spooler
Or you could create a batch file to do it for you using the above commands, but for everyone who just likes to make things easier for themselves or others who turn to you for help, the Stalled Printer Repair utility is simple and effective. Some of the best utilities often are.
Compatible with 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 32 and 64bit
A Simple way to Remove Stuck Print Jobs is a post from: Raymond.CC Blog