Les Jones: How to Stop Print Jobs Under Windows XP

February 16, 2006

Tech > How to Stop Print Jobs Under Windows XP

I had a runaway print job the other day - nothing but hearts and flowers coming out the printer, one line per page. I brought up the print queue from the Start bar and tried to cancel, but no dice. Our network admin showed me this next trick for stopping any print jobs under Windows XP.

Go to Start -> Settings -> Control Panel.

Doubleclick Administrative Tools.

Doubleclick Services.

Scroll down the list of services and select Print Spooler.

Click the Restart link. Worked for me.

Posted by lesjones | TrackBack

Comments

I usually yank the print cable out of the wall.

Posted by: SayUncle at February 15, 2006

Heh. Problem is the print job starts right back up like a zombie when you re-connect the cable.

Posted by: Les Jones at February 15, 2006

Ctl+Alt+Del and killing the spooler process doesn't work either - it restarts after a minute or so and starts printing where it left off. Likewise for powering down the entire network, one bit at a time or all at once. I sure hope this restart thing works...

Posted by: Frank Jacobs at May 17, 2006

It works...for about sixty seconds. Then the print job starts up again....ACK!!!

Posted by: Frank Jacobs at May 17, 2006

There was a program floating around a few years ago called Print Job Assinator or something like that. It worked, but it seems to have disappeared.

Posted by: HaX80r at September 20, 2006

I have had to restart the spooler more times than I care to remember and each time I forget how I did it last time and I am frantically searching help in XP or online MS support site all of wich are rubbish.... everytime it is someones random blog or a geek site which helps. Thanks for being here in my hour of need

Posted by: Moore at November 27, 2007

Good man - would never have thought of stopping the print spooler. Thanks.

Posted by: Dennis Greene at March 24, 2008