If you’re printer suddenly stops working, then it could be due to corruption in the print spooler. Let me explain.
Windows 10 & 11 can handle several print jobs at the same time. To achieve this, print jobs are queued until they can be sent to the printer. The place where they’re queued is called the print spooler (it’s just a folder within Windows).
Sometimes though, one of the documents waiting to be printed can become corrupted. Unreadable, unusable. And that stops everything from working. It’s a kind of log jam.
To clear the jam, you have to clear the print spooler. In effect, you need to delete everything inside the spooler and start again.
How To Clear A Print Job In Windows 10 And 11.
There are 3 steps to clearing a stuck print job and fortunately, the process is exactly the same for both Windows 10 and 11.
None of the steps is difficult to do, but it is important to do them in the right order.
- Stop the Print Spooler service (net stop spooler)
- Delete the stuck print jobs. Open the spool folder and delete everything.
- Restart the Print Spooler service (net start spooler)
So let’s get started.
Net Stop Spooler.
So the first thing to do is to stop the print spooler service. You have to stop it first, before you can clear out the stuck print jobs.
Click the Start button and type “cmd”.
Right-click Command Prompt and then left-click RUN AS ADMINISTRATOR.
When the command prompt window opens, type –
net stop spooler
Then press the Enter key.
After hitting the Enter key on your keyboard, you should see a message informing you that the Print Spooler service has stopped.
That’s what you want. Now the service has stopped working, you can jump into the spooler folder and start deleting the stuck print jobs.
PS, you can leave the command prompt window open, you’ll need it again in a little while to start the Spooler service.
Clear Stuck Print Jobs.
All the print jobs are queued inside a folder called the Print Spool. Inside that folder will be the file that has got stuck.
They can get stuck because they’ve become corrupted in some way, something has gone wrong. The important point is that Windows won’t move on and print other files until the one that’s stuck has been removed.
So just one print job that fails means that your printer will suddenly stop working.
To clear the print job, press the Windows key and letter R to open the Run box.
Type – %systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\
Or better still, Copy and Paste it from here and then click the OK button.
The Run Dialogue Box Window.
The Run dialogue window is just a quick way of jumping directly to the folder we need to be in.
If you prefer you can use File Explorer to open the folder. Navigate to C:/Windows/System32/Spool/Printers
Delete All The Print Jobs.
Inside the print spooler folder you’ll see all the print jobs (files) that are currently queued for printing. At least one of these is stuck. There’s something wrong with it.
You could start by deleting them one at a time hoping to delete the one that’s causing the problem and thus allowing all the others to begin printing. But that’s a thankless task.
I’d recommend that you just delete everything in the folder.
Restart The Print Spooler Service.
Once you’ve deleted everything inside the spool folder, you should have cleared the problem. Close the folder and then go back to the command prompt to restart the Print Spooler service.
Type – net start spooler
And press Enter on your keyboard.net stop spooler
After a moment or two, you should see a message that the service started successfully.
Close the Command Prompt and you should be good to go.
Restarting Your Computer And Printer.
Strictly speaking, it shouldn’t be necessary to reboot your computer and printer. You haven’t changed or deleted any system files, all you’ve actually done is to delete some of your own files (documents).
But I find that just occasionally it helps. Reboot your PC and turn off your printer and then turn it back on.
Summary.
Clearing a stuck print job is relatively easy to do and can solve all sorts of issues when your printer just stops working.
