You may find yourself in a situation where your printer is not working properly and won’t print any documents. The most common reason for this is that there are documents in the printer queue that have not yet been printed (or sent to be printed).
To clean up these documents, you need to delete them from the print spooler service – which also cleans up any old files associated with those documents which will resolve the related problems.
For those who aren’t familiar with what a print queue is or what a spooler does: A print queue is simply the line of documents waiting to be printed by your printer. The spooler service is what manages this queue.
The Windows spooler service is a system process that manages your computer’s printing, faxing, and scanning functions. The spooler service handles the creation of print jobs from applications like Microsoft Word and Adobe Photoshop, then transfers them to the printer. If the spooler service isn’t running, you won’t be able to print.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way on how to clear a printer queue, we can help. This article will walk through the process of clearing your print queue on Windows 10.
HOW TO CLEAR A PRINTER QUEUE IN WINDOWS 10
You may have a lot of stuff queued up in your printer’s memory, and sometimes it can get pretty annoying when you have to wait for all the items to print before you can use it again.
Also Read: How to install Printer Driver
Furthermore, it can also reduce the speed of your computer. Luckily, there are several ways to clear the printer queue in Windows 10 so that you can resume printing right away.
1. USING CONTROL PANEL
To clear the print queue using Control Panel:
Step 1: Click the Windows button on your keyboard, then search for Control Panel and open it.
Step 2: Once open, click on Devices and Printers (or Printers and Scanners depending on your version of Windows).
Step 3: Now find the printer that is having problems printing by scrolling down through all of the printers listed until you find it. Then right-click on the printer and choose the See What’s Printing option from the menu.
Step 4: You should now see a list of documents that are currently printing or waiting to be printed. Simply, select Printer at the top right-hand corner, then click Cancel All Documents to clear all documents from this queue and fix any issues with printing in general!
2. USING BATCH FILE
If you’re more comfortable working with the command line, you can use a batch file to clear your printer queue. To do this, create a word/notepad file and paste in the following commands:
net stop spooler
del %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\* /Q
Net Start Spooler
And then save it as a .bat file in the desired location. Must add .bat at the end of the given name of this file. You can open this .bat file to clear the printer queue whenever you want.
3. USING COMMAND PROMPT
You can also use the Windows command prompt to clear the printer queue on your computer.
- Simply, open the Command Prompt as an administrator on your Windows 10.
- In the Command Prompt window, type each of the above-mentioned commands and press Enter after each.
- It will clear any printer jobs present in the queue.
HOW TO CLEAR THE PRINT QUEUE IN WINDOWS 10 MANUALLY
To manually clear the print queue in Windows 10, you can use the Services window. Here’s how:
Step 1: From the Windows desktop, open the Run box by pressing the Windows Key + R. Then type in “services.msc” and press Enter to open it up.
Step 2: In the Services window, find Print Spooler and right-click on it to select Properties from the contextual menu that pops up.
Step 3: Next, click Stop under Service Status (it will have a green arrow next to it), then press OK on all open dialog boxes that come up as well as Restart if prompted by Windows 10’s User Account Control (UAC).
CONCLUSION
If you’re having a hard time printing, the first thing to check is your print queue. The print queue is where Windows stores all of your print jobs, so it’s a good place to start when troubleshooting.
When the print queue has bogged down, and the printer is refusing to complete your last-minute print job, it can be a major headache for any modern business/individual user (and one of those “I wish I had known that” moments).
The good news is that you’re not completely out of options and learning how to clear a printer queue is easy. Just follow the steps outlined above to clear your print spooler and get back to printing in no time!
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