Clear Print Spooler on Windows

I was continuously receiving calls that some customer-facing printers were not printing receipts.  At first, the quick/easy solution was to reboot the server (desktop), but doing so would then clear the "jammed" print job and start dumping out hundreds of queued up print jobs.

I hate printing in general, but I wasn't running the business so I had to come up with a solution that wouldn't waste baby trees.  I stumbled across this post on Microsoft, How to cancel printing or to delete a print job that is stuck in the print queue in Windows XP.  It provided some commands to clear the print queue files.  I already knew that stopping/starting the service resolved the issue, but I wanted to get rid of the hundreds of queued up jobs.

Here is the code that Microsoft provided.  Per the title of the article, this was geared toward Windows XP.  The machine that we were working with was Windows 7.  Creating a batch file and running when the print queue jams got us in business!  Never found out why the proprietary software/printer combination was jamming up at least once a week (even with reboots every other night).

 net stop spooler  
 del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.shd  
 del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.spl  
 net start spooler  

Remembering Vince Offer

Vince Offer entered our lives with the Sham Wow.  I'm sure you remember it, it was practically the same thing Billy Mays was selling, Zorbeez.  I've never personally used either of these products, but I would have purchased the Zorbeez simply because it was endorsed by Billy Mays.

Later, Vince was selling the Slap Chop, direct competitor with Billy Mays' Quick Chop.  The commercial for the Slap Chop was pretty good.  DJ Steve Porter remixed it and this is what he came up with (EPIC).

With all of the fame, Vince couldn't stay away from temptation.  He was busted for assaulting a prostitute.

After some time out of the limelight, Vince decided it was time to embrace his mistake and endorse yet another competing product, the Schticky.  Now the product does seem rather amazing, even though I already own the Sticky Buddy, but the commercial is even better.