How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in Windows 10 / 11
These specific problems happen if the print spooler service is down or if your print job is blocked in the queue.
Stuck print jobs won’t print and won’t cancel, which is unpleasant. For some reason, perhaps you have a large print job that is taking an eternity to complete. Because they completely cease printing and prevent print tasks from clearing out of the queue, the frozen print jobs or print spooler services are hard to deal with.
You can clear print jobs or restart the print spooler to get your print queue operating again if it doesn’t automatically clear up its tasks after a predetermined length of time.
In this lesson, we’ll cover a variety of causes for stalled print jobs and how to fix them so you can resume printing.
Let’s start with How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in Windows 10 / 11.
What is Print Queue
When you print files in Windows, they do not go straight to the printer. They are listed first in the program’s print queue, which manages all print tasks.
Hence, the Print Queue is a tool for organizing documents and file printing. Jobs are kept in the print queue until they can be printed.
Alternatively, you can see all of the open tasks in the print queue and clear them from your machine.
When using Print Queue, users choose to cancel print tasks if they are no longer needed or if the print result did not turn out correctly.
What are the Reasons behind a Stuck Print Job
The following are a few causes of documents getting stuck during printing:
- The drivers for printers are outdated.
- The print queue is stuck.
- Print spooler service is broken.
- The file is excessively big and uses more memory than the printer can handle.
- When printing spec files, the printer doesn’t recognize them (fonts, graphics, etc.).
However, given the standard of most documents and Windows update protocols, a stalled print job or malfunctioning print spooler service is the most frequent cause of printing failures.
Basically, printing will not be possible on any of the pending jobs in the queue due to stuck print jobs. Simply put, a blocked print will cause the queue to stop and prevent the printing of more files.
Therefore, you should start by emptying the print queue in order to restart the printing process.
Learn how to empty or remove the print queue on Windows 10 or 11 by reading this guide.
How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in Windows 10 / 11
Clear Print Queue Jobs Using Settings App
1. Open Settings from the Start menu.
2. Navigate to Bluetooth and devices > Printers & scanners.
3. Select the Open print queue option after choosing your printer.
4. The print queue with open print jobs will appear in a new window.
5. To cancel or delete a print job, right click on it and choose the Cancel option from the drop down menu.
6. You can also choose to cancel all printing jobs by right clicking on the status column and choosing the Cancel All Documents option from the drop down menu.
Delete Print Queue Jobs Using the Control Panel
You can use the traditional control panel to clear the print queue or delete a specific print job.
A). Open the Control Panel by selecting it from the start menu. In the left pane, choose Sound and Hardware.
B). Next, go to the Devices and Printers section.
C). Right click on your printer, choose from the drop down menu, and choose to See what’s printing.
D). The print queue with open print jobs will appear in a new window.
E). To cancel a print job, right click on it and choose the Cancel option from the drop down menu.
F). By right clicking on the status column and choosing the Cancel All Documents option from the drop down menu, you can easily cancel all printing jobs.
By doing this, you may clear the whole queue of print tasks and start over.
Clear Print Queue Jobs Using Command Prompt
Every time you try to print a file, Windows creates a print job and stores it as a file in the Printers folder on the C drive. By deleting each of those print job files, you may clear the print queue.
First, you have to stop the print spooler service, which is currently utilizing the files. Then you delete the print job files. From the command prompt, you may halt the Print Spooler service, delete the queue, and then immediately resume the service.
1. Go to the start and search for the Command Prompt. Right-click on it and select the Run as administrator option.
2. Next, stop the print spooler service using the following command:
net stop spooler
3. After that, you can remove the print job files using the command below.
del /Q /F /S "%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*"
4. Finally, restart the print spooler service again using the following command:
net start spooler
Restart the Print Spooler Using Command Prompt
Restarting the print spooler resets the service and solve any underlying issue that caused the print malfunction.
Launch the command prompt as an administrator, and from there, restart Print Spooler.
For Spooler to restart, use the SC instructions given below:
sc stop Spooler
sc start Spooler
Restart Print Spooler and Delete Print Queue Using Window Services
If you don’t like or feel comfortable using the command prompt technique, the print spooler services may be manually terminated via the console, and the print job files can be manually destroyed.
A). Hit Win + R to open the Run dialog box. In the empty field, type services.msc and press Enter. As a consequence, the Windows Services management console window will appear.
B). Locate the Print Spooler service by scrolling down. Right click it now and choose the Stop option from the drop down menu.
C). Do not close the Services Window and use the Win + R keyboard combination to reopen the Run dialog box. Enter the following string into the blank field.
%systemroot%\System32\spool\printers\
D). Select and delete all files in the folder.
E). You have completed emptying the print queue once you have deleted these files.
F). Finally, in the Services panel, right click the Print Spooler service and choose Start. You can print your files when the print spooler service restarts.
Reinstall Printer Driver
As mentioned, an outdated printer driver could be the cause of stuck print jobs. A simple solution is to reinstall the printer driver.
1. To do that, start Device Manager from the start menu.
2. Go to your printer in the Print queues section and right click on it. Select Uninstall device from the dropdown menu.
3. After you delete the driver, reboot your computer again. During boot, Windows ought to install any missing printer drivers. After doing this, clearing print jobs should go off without a hitch.
That’s it. Once you delete stuck print job or clear print queue, or solve other underlying issues, you may create a fresh print queue, and everything should go well when printing.
Thank you for reading this blog article about How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in Windows 10 / 11. We will conclude.
How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in Windows 10 / 11 Conclusion
In this article, you have learned how to clear or delete a stuck print job queue on Windows 10/11.
Explore our printing section to learn more.
