Printer Problems?

Printers are continually causing problems - even more so if they're wireless - but the following 'fix' may just help.

Sometimes you will find you are in a state where the print queue has 'jammed'.  There are print jobs in it but the first one is saying that it's being deleted but nothing is happening.  This is particularly common if you install a new printer and the old one still had things to print.

In this case you need to delete all the print jobs but this can't be done from the printer application.  The following are the steps... (and when it says [win]+E it means hold down the windows key and press 'E')

1. Close down the print spool service
   * Press [win]+R and type services.msc and press enter.
   * In the list that opens, find 'Print Spooler' and click on it
   * Towards the upper left click on 'Stop the service' and wait for it to stop.
   * Leave this box open and then...

2. Delete the spool files
   * Press [win]+E and press enter to open windows explorer
   * In the box that opens look on the 'C' drive and find windows > system32 > spool > printers and click on it (you may be asked to give permission to look in this folder).
   * Delete all files in this folder
   * Close the explorer window

3. Restart the print spool service
   * Go back to the window left open in step 1
   * The Print Spooler service should still be selected but if not, select it
   * Towards the upper left click on 'Start the service' and wait for it to start.
   * Close the services window.

And that's it.  The print files should have been removed and, assumoing there are no other problems, things should be back to normal.

Note that this process does not delete anything important; just the things that have been sent to print.  The original documents, etc. will be left alone.