The Print job that won’t die (aka Stop spoolin’ & cancelin’ & poundin’)

Not sure what is possessing me to write about this particular topic and solve but …what the hell. I’m sure many of you have just accepted this Windows printing quirk and threw your hands up the air.

Have you ever noticed that cancelling a print job does absolutely nothing in Windows? And you keep right clicking and pausing, cancelling and/or deleting the print job and repeating this inane process as you pound the desk at the same result  – nothing. Even if you disconnect/shut down the printer and cancel out the job directly on the printer you may still have the print job in there. And the thing is nothing can get ahead of it in the queue until it clears the previous job, which it can’t do because it’s stuck. Printing again just adds more lint to this virtual spooling fuzzball in your printer queue.

So step away from the mouse… and check this out:

Ok that’s 19 seconds of your life you can’t get back…

Seriously, here are 2 things that you need to do.

• Stop the spooling (no fooling).
• Delete the job from the System 32 folder (huh?)

To stop the spooling job type go to Services.

On Windows 10, you can just type services in the search box. You can also go here if that doesn’t work for you: C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStart MenuProgramsAdministrative Tools. The system 32 folder is located here: C:WindowsSystem32spoolPRINTERS. This is the virtual fuzz gumming up your print queue. Delete all those jobs.

If this happens a lot, I’d recommend keeping the printer spool folder as a shortcut in your file directory. Go back to your services and restart the spoolin’ (no foolin). Go back and CTL P yourself to your heart’s content.

Mr. Windows signing off.

Cheers

Jon

P.S/FYI:  For those of you unfamiliar, the “jazz from hell” track referenced is a repeating snippet of Horace Silver’s Doodlin’. At the time it seemed hilarious. Now I think it’s just cryptic…

(AND over-explained)