Clear Print Job Without Rebooting

If you've ever had a print job hang, you're probably familiar with the Windows Print Spooler window. You get to this window simply by selecting the relevant printer from the Control Panel's Printers and Faxes applet (simply Printers in Vista). In the somewhat unusual event of a printer queue jam, you can go to the Print Spooler and simply delete the job. Sometimes, though, the system won't let you cut off print jobs that way: It marks the job "Deleting…" but never quite gets there, and you end up rebooting. Here's a better way to do it.

Open a command prompt (go to Start | Run, then type cmd) and enter the following:

net stop spooler

del c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.shd

del c:\windows\system32\spool\printers\*.spl

net start spooler

In Vista you'll need to open an elevated command prompt by right-clicking on cmd.exe and selecting Run as Administrator. For those of you who remember batch files, use Notepad to save the four commands above as a batch file. Save your file with example "clearprintqueue.bat" in notepad save box. Double click to execute the commands in the batch file.