How to delete or cancel hung print jobs in Windows

Print jobs clogging up your queue?

It's easy enough to cancel a print job in the queue - you simply right-click it and select "cancel," after which the print job status commences to display "deleting..."  After which you normally expect the print job to cancel and disappear so you can resume printing, correct?  Unfortunately, often the print job will hang and prevent you from continuing to print anew from that same printer.  We're going to show you how to forcefully delete these pesky print jobs.

How to force delete print jobs

Fortunately, there is a way to delete the hung print job without having to save all your work, close all your applications, and restart your computer.  Here's how (note that this is intended for Windows XP systems, but a similar approach works on other systems - if this doesn't work for you reply below with your Operating System and version):

• Browse to Start -> Run... and type in "NET STOP SPOOLER" (this will stop the print spooler service)
• Browse to your windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS\ folder
• You should see files there ending in .SPL and .SHD created around the time you tried to print - delete these files.
• Browse to Start -> Run... and type in "NET START SPOOLER" (this will restart the print spooler service)
• Double click the printer icon in the lower-right corner of your taskbar to examine your print job queue and browse to View -> Refresh.

Voila :)  You should see that annoying hung print job finally disappear completely and you should now be able to resume printing without having to restart your computer.