Clearing hung printer queue?

[Richard Goh]

My wife's machine will, on occasion, hang on one print job. Then we can not
delete this job in the printer queue. We have to turn off the printer and
reboot the computer to clear this one printer job. Now my neighbor has the
same problem. When she attempts to print email from her son, it prints the
document, but only reports 99% done on the printer dialog box. Then hangs
the printer queue. We can not delete that print job from the printer queue,
except to turn off the printer and reboot the computer.

Both machines are running Windows XP SP2. My wife's printer is an Apollo
(HP want-a-be) and the neighbors printer is Dell all-in-one printer.

I have always used the "turn off printer - reboot computer" technique for
clearing this problem. That is okay for a random hang. But there must be
some way to clear this problem without this technique. I have searched the
news groups for an answer (lots of complaints over the years) but found
none. Most MS KB articles deal with network print servers.

Does anyone know how to go into the back door and clear this queue in
Windows XP?

Thanks

 

[Thingy]

My wife's machine will, on occasion, hang on one print job. Then we can
not delete this job in the printer queue. We have to turn off the printer
and reboot the computer to clear this one printer job.

<snip>

You can try stopping and restarting the printer spooler service - Right
click on
My Computer, select Manage and the services can be fiddled with from the
mmc window that comes up. However, that is only a temporary fix.
Have both computers got the latest driver, as this might be a known issue
that's been fixed in a later version.