AutoHotkey - Clearing Windows' print queue

[Rick Corbett]

Long story short... my sister's printer kept hanging but (using TeamViewer) I found it could be kicked back into operation by clearing the print queue.

I adapted a post in the AutoHotkey forums to keep her going until I can hopefully come up with a more permanent solution:

; Based on https://autohotkey.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24987&hilit=print+queue
#SingleInstance force ; Ensure only one instance at a time
#NoTrayIcon ; Suppress the default icon in the Notification Area

; Prompt to 'Run as Admin', i.e. show UAC dialog
If Not A_IsAdmin
{
   Run *RunAs "%A_ScriptFullPath%"  ; Requires AHK v1.0.92.01+
   ExitApp
}

; Show user message to inform what's happening
SplashImage,, W300 H120,, `nPlease wait...`n`nThe Printer queue is being cleared.`n`n This may take up to 10 seconds., Clear Printer Queue

; Stop the Print Spooler
Runwait, %comspec% /c "net stop spooler",, hide

; Windows has its Print Queue located at the path used below.
Runwait, %comspec% /c "del C:\Windows\System32\spool\printers\* /Q /F /S",, hide ;  Delete all files in the Print Queue (using [Q]uiet mode, [F]orce and clear [S]ub-folders switches)
; See https://ss64.com/nt/del.html for more info about the DEL command

; Restart the Print Spooler
Runwait, %comspec% /c "net start spooler",, hide

; Close the information message
splashimage, off

ExitApp

All it does is pop the following dialog, stop and restart the spooler service in elevated mode (i.e. as Administrator) then close the dialog:
printer_queue_being_cleared.png

Hope this helps...

[RetiredGeek]

Rick,

Here's a PowerShell version that has a Setup switch which will add a scheduled task to run as Admin and a desktop shortcut (which can be moved if you wish) to call it.

It also includes comment based help file.

Just place the script (program) in the directory where you want to run it from and then run the program from an elevated PS session with the -Setup argument.

Clear-PrintSpooler.zip: Clear-PrintSpooler.zip

HTH

[Rick Corbett]

Here's a PowerShell version that has a Setup switch which will add a scheduled task to run as Admin and a desktop shortcut (which can be moved if you wish) to call it.

That's really cool... thank you!

I'll have to look into creating scheduled tasks from within AHK.