How to fix stuck printer jobs

Printers have an annoying habit of getting stuck. Not those paper jams, those are easier to fix. But the stuck print jobs, where a number of botched print jobs queue up in the print window and you can neither delete them nor create fresh print jobs. It completely stalls the printer. So how do you fix this mess?

There are two ways – fix it manually or fix it through a software. We will look at the manual method first because knowing how to do it without any tools will allow you to fix any stuck printer anywhere.

Manual Method

1. Click on Start>Run and type services.msc to launch the Services manager.
2. On the list of services locate the "Print Spooler" service, right-click on it and click Stop.
3. Open the C:\Windows\System32\Spool\PRINTERS and delete all files inside this folder.
4. Re-launch the Services manager and start the "Print Spooler" service by right-clicking on it and clicking Start.

The print queue is now cleared and you can start printing again.

The manual method is easy and you don’t really need any software to do it, but anyway, here is one application that purges the stalled printer jobs for you. Stalled Printer Repair (Mirror)is a portable application that displays a list of all stalled printer jobs and allows you to delete them with just a click. Nice and easy way if your printer gets stuck much too often.