How to clear the print queue in Windows?
Jul 11, 2025 am 02:19 AMWhen encountering the problem of printing task stuck, clearing the print queue and restarting the Print Spooler service is an effective solution. First, open the "Device and Printer" interface to find the corresponding printer, right-click the task and select "Cancel" to clear a single task, or click "Cancel all documents" to clear the queue at one time; if the queue is inaccessible, press Win R to enter services.msc to open the service list, find "Print Spooler" and stop before starting the service. If necessary, you can manually delete the residual files under the C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS path to completely solve the problem.
The printing task is a common problem for Windows users, especially in environments where multiple people share printers. In this case, clearing the print queue is the most direct and effective solution.

Open the Devices and Printers interface
The first step is to find the printer icon you are using. You can press Win R
to enter control printers
to quickly open the print management interface. All installed printers will be listed here, and click the one with the current problem to enter the operation page.

If you see a yellow exclamation mark sign, it means that the printer has a task stuck.
After clicking in, you will see a print queue window showing all tasks waiting for printing.

Clear the current printing task
In this print task list, you can see the status of each task, such as "Printing", "Pause" or "Error". Right-click a task and select "Cancel" to manually clear individual tasks.
If you want to clear all tasks at once, you can do this:
- Click "Printer" in the menu bar
- Select Cancel All Documents
This operation will delete all print tasks in the current queue, including those being processed.
Stop and restart Print Spooler service
If the print queue is always gray, inaccessible, or the task cannot be deleted, it may be because there is a problem with the Print Spooler service in the background. This time you need to manually restart it.
The operation steps are as follows:
- Press
Win R
and enterservices.msc
to enter - Find "Print Spooler" in the service list
- Right-click to select "Stop"
- Wait for a few seconds before right-clicking "Start"
This will force refresh the printing system cache, which can often solve the problem of stuckness.
Note: In some cases, after Spooler is stopped, you can manually delete the residual files under
C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS
path, and then restart the service.
Basically, these methods are all the methods, and most print queue problems can be solved through the above methods.
The above is the detailed content of How to clear the print queue in Windows?. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!

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