Last Updated: April 2026
When you print a document or other type of file from within Windows you may have noticed that a small printer icon pops up by the clock in the system tray and then disappears. That is your print manager letting you know that your job is printing. If you are printing a large job then the icon tends to stay in the tray longer. You can even double click it to check the status of the print job, pause the job or even cancel it.
But if your printer or computer is having an issue, you may get a popup notification telling you that there was a problem printing your document etc.
Occasionally you may see a red and white question mark on the printer icon in the system tray indicating a problem with your print job. When this happens that means that some error has occurred and it needs your attention. You can then double click this icon to open your print manager to see the status of the job. You can also go to the Windows settings under Bluetooth & devices to view your printers. Then find the one that is having the issue and click on it and then choose Open print queue.
You may see under the status area that you have an error message. This message can be caused by a variety of things from a printer malfunction, paper jam, being out of paper or a Windows or print driver problem. If its not a hardware, cable or paper jam issue then it is most likely Windows or driver related and will require some troubleshooting to clear the error.
Most of the time this is easily fixable by deleting the print job and trying again. You can either right click the Document and select Cancel or click the ellipsis and select Cancel All if you have printed it more than once and need to clear out all the print jobs. Once you get a printer error any other jobs you print after that will get stuck behind it until you solve the first problem. So you may open your print queue and find a whole list of documents waiting to be printed.
Once you delete the document it may take a few minutes for it to be removed from your print manager window. There may also come a time where it won’t go away no matter how long you wait. When this happens you have to take some additional steps. First you should try to reboot your computer and see if it clears it out. After rebooting, check if the job has cleared. Once again, you can go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners and select your printer from the list and click Open print queue to see if any documents are still stuck. Then double click your printer and see if the print job is still listed there. If not then you can try to print again.
If the job is still stuck, you need to manually clear the Print Spooler. To do this you need to go to the services control panel.
- Press Windows Key + R, type services.msc, and hit Enter.
- Find the Print Spooler service, right-click it, and select Stop.
- Do not restart your computer yet. First, we need to delete the temporary files that Windows created for the print job.
Manually Deleting Stuck Spooler Files
Sometimes the ‘Cancel’ button simply doesn’t work because the temporary file is corrupted. To force it out:
- After stopping the Print Spooler service, open File Explorer.
- Navigate to: C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS
- Delete every file you see in that folder (you may need administrator permission). Do not delete the folder itself, just the contents.
- Go back to the Services window, right-click Print Spooler, and select Start. Your print queue should now be completely empty and ready for a fresh start.”
Troubleshooting Persistent Jams
If jobs continue to get jammed frequently, it may be time to update or reinstall your printer driver. In some cases, third-party PDF viewers or complex graphic files can overwhelm older printers. Try ‘Printing as Image’ from your PDF settings if a specific document keeps crashing the spooler.
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