One of the benefits of having a wireless printer is that anyone can start printing using any WiFi enabled device if they have access to the printer over the WiFi network. But if a number of people are trying to print many things all at once, it can clog up the printer queue. Sometimes, the printer gets so many requests that it either stops printing or misses some of the pages that it was supposed to print. If your printer has become unresponsive and is not processing the print jobs in the queue, then you can purge all the print jobs in the queue and start afresh. Here is how:
- Open an elevated command prompt in Windows. In Windows 8 and Windows 10, you can press the shortcut keys Win+X and then choose Command Prompt (Admin). For Windows 7, you can read – how to open elevated command prompt in Windows 7.
- In the command prompt Window, give the following commands:
net stop spooler
del /F /Q %windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*
net start spooler
- This will clear all the printing jobs for all the printers attached or connected to your PC and make them available once again. Now you can proceed with printing once again.
You can also save these commands in a batch script and launch this script whenever you have to purge the print jobs from the print spooler. However, if you are not comfortable using the command line interface, then you can download a simple tool called Print Spooler Fixer and use it to restart the print spooler service.
This tool is very basic and you just have to click on the Fix Print Spooler button to restore and fix the print spooler service. This sets the print spooler service to be started automatically with Windows logon. But this tool does not clean the print jobs already in the queue, it just fixes the print spooler service if it is not configured properly.