Print Queue Full

Print Queue Full: a reader asks…

I have a Windows 7 computer and an HP Envy printer. Yesterday I had a printer jam which took me a long time to fix. I had a lot of documents queued up to print and of course, they aren’t printing. Of course I’m under the gun trying to print tax return documents. I’ve tried sending new print jobs to the printer but nothing prints. I have pressed all possible icons and can’t find that area of the system in which to get the documents to print… Can you point me in the right direction?

The direction you need to go is to first clear out your print queue, and then try sending a new print job. You can see your print queue by clicking Start > Devices and Printers > and then double-clicking the icon for your printer. That opens a small window which shows all the print jobs stacked up. Click on the menu item Printer, then click the Cancel All Documents sub-menu item. That should clear out your print jobs. To be safe, shut down and restart your printer and your computer before you try to send a new print job.

If for some reason the jobs can’t be deleted, then your printer spooler function may be…malfunctioning. To fix this, you need to delve into the Windows Services control, shut down the print spooler, manually clear the print queue, and restart the computer (which will restart the print spooler fresh). To get to the Services window:

1. hold down the Windows key and press R, which opens a small Run window
2. In the Run window box, type services.msc and hit enter. That opens your Services window
3. The list should be alphabetized, so scroll down to the entry “Print Spooler” and click it.

You’ll see a “Stop the service” link on the left. Click that. Before you restart your computer, it’s worth deleting any print jobs that might be still in the queue. Use Windows Explorer to navigate to C:\Windows\System32\Spool\PRINTERS and delete any files inside this folder – you may need to click a prompt to gain the appropriate administrator authority to open the PRINTERS folder.

Now restart the computer and you should find that your print queue is clear and you can send a print job to the printer. Only send one job and make sure it prints ok before getting back to your normal work.