IT Solutions Blog | Trigon Technology

IT Support Services | Quick Printer Fix – Restart the Print Spooler

As an IT Support professional, I often hear from my family members and friends about how their printer freezes up and the queue does not respond.  Here are a few steps that you can take to try and resolve this issue (before you kick it(, without being a certified IT professional or a managed services provider.

Step 1

Go into the ‘Start' menu and select ‘Run'.  When the run window pops up, type in ‘services.msc' and press enter.

Step 2

Once in the Services window, scroll down until you see the ‘Print Spooler'.  Right-click on ‘Print Spooler' and select ‘Stop'.  This will stop the computer process that contains your print queues.

Step 3

Next, you will need to clear the jam.  Now that the Print Spooler service is stopped, open an Explorer window and type ‘C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS' into the address line.  Delete all of the files in this folder.

Step 4

Now that the jam is cleared, you will need to restart the Print Spooler service.  Go back to the services window, right-click on ‘Print Spooler', and select ‘Start'.

Problem Solved.  Thanks Trigon!