Windows 7 - Cannot completly remove printer

I am using a "out of warranty" HP D2680 printer. Yesterday it had a paper jam. Cleared that and tried to delete the document from the que. It would not delete although the status change to "deleting".

So removed the printer from the computer. START----DEVICES AND PRINTERS----and removed the printer. It did not disappear but was grayed out.
I was able to reinstall the printer. However, it was named copy(1). A paper jam again occurred, could not delete the document, removed the printer and reinstalled. All the same as the first time,except the new name was now (copy2).

Before I can determine what might be wrong with the printer regarding paper jam (hardware) I must correct the software side. START---DEVICES and PRINTERS-----remove.
Need help!

Hello Blockie,

I have a couple of hp printers myself and this problem is frequent. My network printer even refuses to uninstall from the control panel. So what I do (a bit rough but works) is to first delete the HP printer folder in "Program files" or "Program files (x86)" folder. Then I open regedit and delete all instances of that printer's name. E.g. for my laserjet, I locate all instances of "laserjet" (Find, F3) and delete the respective keys. After that I "remove" the device in Start-Devices and Printers and reboot.

After doing all this I'm able to reinstall the printer in peace and get it working.

If you go into the services and stop the print spooler service, this usually takes care of the deleting document problem, then the printer can be removed.

I STOPPED the spooler and all the printers and scanners disappeared.
The spooler is presently AUTO. How can I change it to MANUAL? Can I purge the memory of documents? Samee as deleting, but that doesn't work.

There's nothing wrong with AUTO.

Your problem was simply that you still had documents left in the print queues (both for the original and then the COPY's) from the jams, so that they were still thought of as "printing", which first needed to be deleted before you can delete the host printers themselves.

You could have accomplished that even with the spooler service active, by clicking on the printer icon in the System Tray, selecting the document(s) still in the print queue, right-clicking and DELETE'ing them.

Once the queue had disappeared for a printer there's nothing to prevent the printer from cleanly being deleted/removed from Devices and Printers and totally disappearing.

Manually stopping the printer spooling service is another way to sort of accomplish the same thing, and get the printer in a state where it can be removed. But eliminating the print queue contents itself was really the bottleneck here.

I have found that the best way to completely remove everthinhg in the print queue is to first open Services and scroll down to Print Spooler, right-click it and select Stop. Next you need to go into the Printer folder and delete all the files there. The folder is located in C:\Windows\System32\
Spool\Printers. Thea's where it is in Windows 7. After you delete the files in the Printers folder, you get back into Services and right-click on Print Spooler and select Start.

Hi folks. Since I have a printer that for various reasons I have to clear the print spooler often. Attached is a little bat file that works very fast in XP. Have not had to use it in Win 7 yet but can see no reason that it should not work. A very good tool to have in your kit.
Cheers
JohnnyA

I have this problem occasionally too, with my older HP Laserjet. I agree with the suggestions above, but I have found that before I do any of that, sometimes if my que gets jammed up, once I delete the jammed documents, I can clear the que and avoid further problems if I merely turn my printer off for a moment and then back on. If that doesn't work by itself, rebooting the computer usually does the trick.

P.S. Or instead of 'stopping' the spooler, go to Start, type: services, then go down the list of services to: Print Spooler Service, and select: 'Restart.'

JohnyA,
I DL your bat file and will keep it for future use. Thanks.

What I finally did was to disconnect the printer and restore a backup image of yesterday (most recent one). The printer was still there but grayed out, because of the disconnect. I was able to remove the grayed out printer. I then connected the printer again and the software installed. The print spooler was empty and could use the printer again. All OK now. Thanks guys for your help.

I haven't tried this myself, but my intuition would actually be that this should NOT occur. Otherwise, you would lose documents in the print spool queue just because the printer got turned off.

The idea behind the spool queue is that you will NOT lose your documents. The queue is even supposed to be persistent across re-boots, if I'm not mistaken. That's the whole design.

What if you'd queued up 100 documents for printing, and the power went out? You wouldn't want to lose all of these, and thus the ability to print them when the power came back on?

I suppose it might vary by printer, but I think not. I think the print spool mechanism guarantees that you will NOT lose un-printed documents, unless you cancel them... even across re-boots.

Obviously, I should have tried this before writing about it, but that's my intuition.