Tips and Tricks

Instantly Cancel Any Printing Job With A Simple Batch File

Cancelling or deleting a job from the print queue takes ages in Windows. This is a common annoyance, which pretty much anyone who has ever used printers would be familiar with.

Apparently, this occurs because the temporary file created for the print job can’t be deleted while it is still being accessed by Windows. The solution is to manually kill the spoolsv.exe service using Task Manager and delete all job files present in C:WindowsSystem32spoolPRINTERS. Off course, if you need to continue printing you would have to either restart your computer or manually restart the spoolsv.exe service.

The trouble with this solution is that it demands too much work. However, a helpful Reddit user has created a batch file to automate the process. In order to use it you can download the batch file from here or manually copy the following code into Notepad and save it as file_name.bat.

@echo off
echo Stopping print spooler.
echo.
net stop spooler
echo deleting stuff... where? I'm not sure. Just deleting stuff.
echo.
FOR %%A IN (%systemroot%system32spoolprinters*.*) DO DEL %%A
echo Starting print spooler.
echo.
net start spooler

Now, whenever you need to delete all printing jobs, just double click on the batch file. However, be careful while using this in a work environment as if you are on a print server, it would cancel printing jobs for all connected printers.

(via LifeHacker)

Tags: ,

8 Responses to “Instantly Cancel Any Printing Job With A Simple Batch File”

  1. On March 19, 2010 at 3:04 pm NavaPavan responded with... #

    This was nice one to end the task.

  2. On March 20, 2010 at 6:22 am Chethan responded with... #

    Thanks for The Instant solution :p
    .-= Chethan´s last blog ..Zoozoo Jumping on Trampoline meets Tiger. sms GAME to 111[Vodafone ad] =-.

  3. On March 21, 2010 at 4:42 pm Ankit responded with... #

    I liked this this code so much that I made an exe based app of this with some more features.. Gonna releae it on my blog soon. BTW post retweeted. :)

  4. On May 3, 2010 at 8:55 pm Mike responded with... #

    Oh good one! I will be making this a part of my usual batch files taht I use.
    .-= Mike´s last blog ..Send Email From A Batch File =-.

  5. On August 6, 2010 at 12:35 pm lowongan responded with... #

    nice job to increase salary

  6. On January 25, 2011 at 2:32 am used tires responded with... #

    Sometimes I can never some of the jobs to cancel, didn’t know in the past why this ws happening, but this batch file will come in handy!

    -Jean

  7. On March 3, 2011 at 8:48 pm sell textbooks responded with... #

    Wow that is an awesome shortcut, thanks for the info, good thing I am not on a company network either.

  8. On August 4, 2012 at 2:11 pm emobile_developer responded with... #

    This is indeed helping advice and definitely help to get rid off from such chagrin job. Thanks a lot for bringing such great solution.

Add your response

More in Tips and Tricks (7 of 28 articles)