How To Clear Printer Queue

Manually Clear The Print Queue In Windows 10

Use this method if the print job got stuck in the queue, and you are unable to clear the queue by following the methods mentioned above.

Step 1: In the Start menu or taskbar search box, type services.msc and then press Enter key to open Services window.

Step 2: Here, look for Print Spooler service. Right-click on Print Spooler service and then click Stop option. Minimize the Services window.

Step 3: Open File Explorer and navigate to the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Where C is the driver letter of Windows 10 install drive. If you see a dialog with You dont currently have permission to access this folder message, click the continue button to open up the PRINTERS folder. If you are not the admin, you might need to enter the password.

Step 4: Under the PRINTERS directory, you will see many files. Select all files and press the delete key to delete all files. This will clear the print queue. Click the Yes button if you see the confirmation dialog.

Step 5: Maximize the Services window, right-click on Print Spooler service, and click Start to start the service.

Method 5 of 5

What Is A Print Queue

Of course you may know about a print queue. Maybe a not-so-tech-savvy out there can benefit from this definition? A print queue is a list of printer jobs held in a reserved memory area. It maintains the most recent status of all the active and pending print jobs. You can pause, resume, cancel, and prioritize print jobs or change the order of the jobs.

There could be many reasons for print jobs to queue up: corrupted printer software, selected printer was off or there was no paper in the tray when the print command was issued etc. In such cases when you try to resume printing, by then all the print tasks queue up in the reserved memory. Most of the times you can manually delete the print jobs but sometimes it fails to clear the tasks. Consequently, you need to forcefully delete print tasks.

What If Printer Queue Wont Clear In Windows 10

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It can be frustrating when you want to use your printer but a previous document is in the queue. You try to print several other files to see if printing would start, but they all get lined up. No error message is received, and yet the status remains Printing indefinitely.

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How To Clear The Print Queue

Time needed: 1 minute.

Sometimes, more than one document presents a problem. If you should clear your Windows 10 print queue if its still stuck after deleting the first print job.

To Empty the print queue, open it using the method in the previous step, then select Printer > Cancel All Documents.

Turn off your printer

If youre unable to clear the print queue via the above methods, restarting your printer is always an option.

Turning off a printer is different for each model, but if you likely know where your on button is. Press it to turn off the printer, then unplug the cable from its back. After one minute, plug it back in and the printer will re-sync with your computer and empty the print queue in the process.

Reinstall The Hp Print Driver

Uninstall then reinstall the print driver on a Windows computer.

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How To Simply Cancel Print Job Windows 10

To remove a print job in Windows 10, you need to follow these steps:

Step 1: Go to Settings > Devices > Printers & scanners.

Step 2: Select your printer and click Open queue.

Step 3: Choose the problematic file and cancel it.

If the printer queue is still stuck, you can go to the Printer menu and click Cancel All Documents. If this wont work, restart your computer and printer, unplug any wired connections and plug them back before the reboot is finished.

If you have tried these common solutions but to no avail, here are some ways for you to fix a print queue that isnt deleted.

How To Clear Your Print Queue In No Time Flat

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There is nothing more frustrating than being pressed for time and your printer jams. Of course, it always happens when you have a very important deadline looming. Murphys Law is cruel, after all. You run over to the printer, clear out the jammed paper, and think you are in the clear. Wait, nothing is coming out. Why is that?

On most business networks, the printer you just cleared out is controlled by a print queue. This print queue may reside on your network server or a computer on the network where the printer is shared out. These print queues sometimes get bogged down with requests, particularly after another problem has happened, and they can just cease to process print jobs.

What do most people do? Well, they open up the print icon on their computer. Most times this printer icon can be found in the computers control panel, depending on if you are running Windows or Mac.

But, here is what can happen from time to time . That print job just wont delete. Everything is jammed up and youre banging your fist on the desk with increased frustration, maybe screaming or crying a little.

Still want to clear out your stuck printers manually? Here is how to do it if youre running Windows:

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Print Jobs Cannot Be Deleted: What Now

Were you unable to delete or cancel a print job? Were you even unable to remove the job from the print queue by restarting the system? Then, you may need to remove the print job manually using a Windows CMD command. Otherwise, these failed print jobs may block all further jobs. We will show you three quick and easy solutions for this problem.

Stopping And Restarting Print Queues

Even if the printer has already started running, you can still delete the print job in Windows 10. When you start a print job, it first goes into the print queue which sends all the scheduled print jobs to the printer one by one. Follow the instructions below to delete one or more jobs from the queue.

Read Also: Why Is My Hp Printer Printing Blank Pages

How To Reset The Window 10 Print Spooler Service

Time needed: 2 minutes.

Sometimes the problem is not with the document or application but due to a bug in the Windows print queue service. In such scenarios, you can restart it.

Cannot Delete Print Queue Overview:

You may run into the stuck print job at any time on Windows 10. The most usual ones are:

1. After you printed a document, but you can still see it in print queue and the print queue wont clear on Windows 10.

2. You cant cancel or delete a stuck print job from the print queue.

3. The document you want to delete keeps in the print queue in Windows 10.

4. The print job is stuck and cant stop printing on Windows 10.

Whatever you real case is, and no matter what your printer is, be HP, Brother or Canon, this post will introduce to you how to clear the print queue when it wont clear on Windows 10.

If you feel like to fix Windows 10 wont stop printing since you cant delete the print queue, you would better try the ways below one by one until the print problem disappeared from your PC.

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Clear And Restart The Print Spooler

Clearing and restarting the print spooler should be your first step when trying to fix stuck print jobs because it wont actually cancel any of your currently printing documents. Instead, it restarts things and proceeds as if all those documents had just been sent to the printer for the first time.

To do this, youll stop the Print Spooler service, delete the temporary cache Windows uses to spool print jobs, and then start the service again. Were going to show you two ways to do this. First, well look at how to do it manually, and then well look at how to create a batch script so that you can do it any time you want with just a click.

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Force Clear Printer Queue On Mac Osx

Before diving too deep into the different methods of clearing the printer queue for your Mac, give this a try: Launch the Terminal app, and type in cancel -a for queues that get stuck. This procedure should do the trick in most cases. If the process doesnt help you, follow the other methods below.

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How To Cancel Or Delete A Stuck Print Job In Windows

Walter Glenn is a former Editorial Director for How-To Geek and its sister sites. He has more than 30 years of experience in the computer industry and over 20 years as a technical writer and editor. He’s written hundreds of articles for How-To Geek and edited thousands. He’s authored or co-authored over 30 computer-related books in more than a dozen languages for publishers like Microsoft Press, O’Reilly, and Osborne/McGraw-Hill. He’s also written hundreds of white papers, articles, user manuals, and courseware over the years.Read more…

Sometimes, documents youre printing get stuck in the printers queue, preventing further documents from being printed. Heres how to fix it when that happens.

Whether youre using a local or , sometimes printing doesnt go quite right. If youve tried troubleshooting obvious printer problemspaper jams, no paper, low ink or toner, or simply restarting the printerits time to turn your attention toward the print queue. Often, simply clearing and restarting the print spoolerthe software that prepares and manages printing documentscan fix the problem. If that fails, you may need to cancel one or more documents in your print queue and see if that gets things going again.

This should work in Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10.

Stop And Restart The Print Spooler Using A Cmd Command

Step 1: Enter cmd in the search bar and click Run as administrator in the dialog box that pops up. Alternatively, you can also use the keyboard shortcut key + , enter cmd and then use the shortcut + + .

Step 2: In the opened command prompt window, enter the following CMD command: net stop spooler.

Step 3: In the Windows File Explorer, enter the path WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete all temporary SHD and SPL files.

Step 4: Go back to the command prompt window and restart the print spooler using the following CMD command: net start spooler.

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Force Clear Printer Queue Using Preferences

This method is for those who are unable to find the Printer icon on the Dock.

How To Fix A Stuck Print Job

Perhaps you don’t need to stop a print job, but rather clear one that isn’t working properly. There are additional steps to regain control of your printer.

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Stop Clear And Restart Print Spooler From Command Prompt To Clear Print Queue

Whenever you try to print a file, Windows creates a print job and adds it as a file in the Printers folder located in the C drive. By deleting all those print job files, you can clear the print queue. Since the files are actively used by the print spooler service, you need to first stop it and then delete the print job files. From the command prompt, you can stop the Print Spooler service, clear the queue and start the service in one go. Let me show you how.

1. Search for the Command Prompt in the start menu. Right-click on the command prompt and select Run as Administrator option.

2. The above action will open the command prompt with admin rights. Use the below command to stop the print spooler service.

net stop spooler

3. Next, you need to delete the print job files. For that, use the below command to delete files. Dont worry, we are not deleting anything important. These files are just responsible for the print queue.

del /Q /F /S "%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*"

4. After deleting the print job files, you need to start the print spooler again so that you can print your files without restarting Windows. For that use the below command.

net start spooler

That is it. From now on, you should be able to print files without the print queue getting stuck. If the print queue does get stuck again, follow the above procedure once more to clear the print queue.

How To Forcefully Clear The Print Queue In Windows

Get rid of that stuck print job

Have you ever run into the situation where you try to print something and nothing happens? You wait for it to print, but the job doesnt go through? There are a ton of reasons why a print job may not actually print, but one of the common causes is that the printer queue has a stuck print job.

This can happen for a number of reasons. Lets say you tried to print something a few hours back, but the printer was off. You ended up not needing the document and you forgot about it. Then you come back and try to print. The print job is added to the queue and if the previous job didnt get removed automatically, it will be behind that print job that never got printed.

Sometimes you can manually go in and delete the print job, but sometimes you just cant get rid of it! In this type of case, you have to clear the print queue manually. In this article, Ill show you the steps to clear the print queue.

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Clear Print Queue In Windows If Printer Is Stuck And There Is No Printout

I am sure the topic itself has brought back memories a la déjà vu, right? We all, at some time or the other, have faced problems while printing, especially after giving a print command and waiting endlessly for the printout. Be it at home or office, its a common problem that all of us have encountered. It was probably resolved in the office by the IT admin and at home probably by a tech savvy family member or friend. They both probably also told you that they resolved it by manually deleting the print queue.

When printout does not emerge from the printer, we look at the print queue only to we find our document in Printing state but nothing comes out of the printer. Then we realize that the print queue is stuck and we want to clear the print queue to start afresh. But all our efforts to delete the print document or cancel the printing process go in vain.

But the next time you face a similar situation you need not worry. Just read this article to get going because the process involved is very simple. In the following sections, we will guide you through the process of forcefully clearing or deleting the print queue in Windows.

Fix : Reinstall The Printer Driver

If your print jobs still get stuck in a queue, the main cause is a wrong or outdated printer driver. So you should update your printer driver to see if it fixes your problem.

There are two ways to update your printer driver: manually or automatically.

Option 1: Install the printer driver manually

Printer manufacturers such as HP, Canon, Brother, Dell, Epson keep releasing new printer drivers to fix bugs and improve performance. To get them, you can go to your printer manufacturers website and download the latest driver and install it manually.

• Epson: Epson Products & Drivers

Option 2: Automatic printer driver update

If you dont have the time, patience, or computer skills to update your audio driver manually, you can do it automatically with Driver Easy. Driver Easy will automatically recognize your system and find the correct driver for your device.

You dont need to know exactly what system your computer is running, you dont need to risk downloading and installing the wrong driver, and you dont need to worry about making a mistake when installing. Driver Easy handles it all.

All the drivers in Driver Easycome straight fromthe manufacturer

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