How to cancel stuck print jobs from the spooler

reading time: 3 minutes

Updated on March 26, 2025

Print jobs in Windows can sometimes fail to print and remain in an error status, which might prevent new print jobs from executing.

The “see what is printing” window usually shows the jobs that failed to execute, but in most cases will prevent you from clearing them. It usually is because another user has created the print job, unfortunately, this will likely prevent other users from printing a new document as well.

The easiest way to solve this is to manually clear the print jobs and restart Windows Print Spooler

What is the Windows print spooler?

The print spooler is a Windows system executable that centralizes and manages the printing process. Management of printing involves retrieving the location of the correct printer driver, loading that driver, spooling high-level function calls into a print job, scheduling the print job for printing, and so on.

Note: It runs as a service "Print Spooler", is shared by all users on the computer, and so can only be managed by a user with admin permissions.

What is a print job?

A Print job is a document waiting to be printed, alongside specific instructions (metadata) for the printing (number of pages, user, layout…). It is put into the print queue of a specific printer until it is picked up by the spooler and sent to the printer.

On Windows, print jobs are saved as files that will be deleted once the printing is done.

Note: On Windows, print jobs are saved as temporary files that will be deleted once the printing is done. These files are located in the following folder:

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

How to clear print jobs stuck in the printer spooler manually

Stop the print spooler service

To clear the print jobs from the spooler, you first need to stop the spooler service.

Click Start, type services, and open the services window (choose Run as administrator).

In the services window, look for the service Print Spooler on the left-hand side pane.

Open the properties window (double-click), and in the General tab, click on the Stop button in the bottom command bar.

Remove all files (print jobs) from the spooler folder

Open explorer and navigate to this location:

C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS

Note: You will need admin permissions to access this folder as it contains print jobs for all users.

Select all the files in the folder (manual selection or CTRL+A), then press the delete icon or right-click and choose Delete in the menu.

Start the print spooler service

Now that all the print jobs have been deleted, we need to restart the spooler for it to take effect.

To do so, open the services window again, find the service Print Spooler, open the properties window, and this time click on Start.

The spooler will start immediately, all failing print jobs will be cleared, and if you had queued documents, these will be sent to the spooler and start printing.

How to clear print jobs stuck in the printer spooler with a batch file

If this happens quite often, and you need to clear the spooler regularly, you can also create a batch file with the following commands to automate the process.

Note: Just remember that you will need to run this batch file as administrator.