WinXP print job problem

[icarus4586]

There's a document in the print queue for my printer that won't print and won't delete. Its status is "Printing," and if I delete it, the status changes to "Deleting," but it never deletes. When my printer is on and the job is supposedly printing, spoolsv.exe uses around 5% of the total CPU time. If I try to delete the job, or if I turn the printer off, spoolsv.exe uses 99% CPU. If the printer is off, I can kill spoolsv.exe and it won't come back until I turn the printer back on.
As a result of all this, I can't print anything. I've restarted, plugged the printer into different USB ports... everything I can think of short of reinstalling the driver.
Any suggestions?

 

[xtknight]

Wow, it doesn't go away when you reboot? No idea...
Reinstall the driver I guess.
Or maybe: unplug USB cable. Shut off PC. Shut off printer. Turn on printer. Turn on PC. Plug in USB cable. I'm pretty sure that will do it? I'm thinking there's some sort of document memory somewhere.

 

[LTC8K6]

Uninstall the printer in safe mode.

 

[icarus4586]

Thanks, I'll see if either of those work.

 

[icarus4586]

Tried the first suggestion, and the print job was still there.
And no printers show up in safe mode, since the printer drivers aren't loaded.
I unplugged the printer and tried to remove it, but now it just says "Deleting" under the printer. I restart and it's still there with "Deleting" under the icon.
And friggin stupid HP doesn't even have an uninstaller program that I can find. (At least not one in Start->Programs or "Add or Remove Programs" in the Control Panel)

 

[icarus4586]

Here's what I see after disconnecting the printer, "removing" it, and then restarting. I did plug the printer back in after restarting.
http://www.rit.edu/~ntp0166/printer.png

 

[LTC8K6]

I had this same trouble with an HP usb printer before, I am trying to remeber how I solved it. It simply would not cooperate no matter what I tried.

You could try stopping the print spooler under performance and maintenance/administrative tools/services in the meantime to see if that helps.

Remember to start it again.

 

[icarus4586]

I can kill spoolsv in the task manager. It will restart itself if the printer is attached and on. But it's not listed in the services manager (services.msc), so there's no way for me to restart it. Right now all I can do is leave the printer off and print to a network printer. If it's on, stuff gets messed up and spoolsv starts using a lot of cpu, like I said earlier.

 

[gsellis]

Armed with the printer name (Whatever), try uninstalling it.

rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /b "Whatever" /dl


XP Printer commands
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /?

Also remember that

Net stop spooler

Stops the print spooler. Net start spooler restarts it. So you can stop and start it without rebooting.

 

[LTC8K6]

Did you try changing the print spooler's startup type to disabled?

 

[icarus4586]

I tried gsellis's suggestion and a dialog box comes up saying something to the effect that it can't find a printer with that name to remove. This is what I typed:
rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /b "hp psc 1310 series" /dl
"hp psc 1310 series" is what the printer is called in the printers page in the control panel. Is it possible that there's some different internal name? Could it be getting messed up because the printer is already supposedly being removed?

And, LTC8K6: I do want the spooler to start. The problem comes when I try to delete the 1 pending job for my USB-connected HP printer, or if that printer was on and gets shut off. I can still print to network printers. Just not the printer that's right there next to my computer. Grr.

 

[nweaver]

reboot
go into the printer queue and change it to "Pause"
right click/delete on the job
reboot
check queue, delete again (if necessary)
unpause (if necessary)
reboot one last time and check it again, should be cleared now.

 

[aux]

Try to manually remove the file from the printer spool directory (you may need to do this in safe mode). I don't have a Windows machine here, use your favorite search engine to find the default spool location.

The usual disclaimer: make sure that you have a good backup just in case if you delete wrong file(s).

 

[icarus4586]

nweaver: Wow. I paused, then hit delete, and bam. The print job was gone, and so was the printer. (Which was expected, since its status was "deleting") So now I just have to reinstall it and I should be good to go. Thanks.

And aux: I got as far as finding the spooler directory (which happens to be C:\windows\system32\spool\), then decided to try nweaver's suggestion. Yours was next.

Thanks all.

 

[nweaver]

yeah, had you not tried to delete it, the printer would still be there. With HP's, watch for dot4 port hell (it's horrible). If you have issues installing, just add printer, find the drivers, and point it to the existing port called dot4 (not sure if you will run into this, only with some HP's)