How to Clear or Unfreeze Your Printer Spool

As referenced in our Blog Posting of Printer Terms on August 3, 2012.

Sometimes when you are printing - there can be an error and nothing will print.  You may or may not see an error message, but when there is an error, documents in the queue (in line) for printing will freeze and nothing will print. You may think that something is wrong with the printer, but the problem is caused by the Print Spooler. The problem can be solved rather easily and removing the jam in the printer will only take a few seconds.

Right-click on "Computer" or "My Computer" and a drop-down menu will appear. Click on "Manage."

Click on "Services and Applications" and then click on "Services" to view all the services on your computer.

Scroll down to "Print Spooler" and right-click on it. A drop-down menu will appear, on which you will click on "Stop" to temporarily halt the service.

Shrink the window and click on "Computer" or "My Computer."

Click on the primary hard drive on the computer, which is normally the "(C:)" drive.

Click on the "Windows" folder.

Click on the "System32" folder.

Click on the "Spool" folder and the "Printers" folder inside it to view the print jobs you want to clear.

Press the "Ctrl" and "A" key simultaneously to select everything and press the "Delete" key to clear the Print Spooler. Close the window.

Restore the "Services" window, right-click on "Print Spooler" and click on "Start" so your printer can schedule print jobs again.

Glossary Of Printer Terms (Part 2 of 2):

This is Part 2 of the blog posting we began on Sunday, July 29^th,2012.

Printing Media - What the printer prints on, i.e. paper, transparencies, film and CD/DVD surfaces. The media type that a printer can support differs by printer type and model.

MFC Printer - A MultiFunction (MFC)/All-In-One printer can perform a rich variety of task including printing, scanning, copying and even faxing. With an MFC/All-In-One printer, you do not need to invest in separate copiers, scanners or fax machines (unless you have special requirements). In general, an MFC/All-In-One printer makes installation easier and saves valuable office space.

Non-impact Printing  - Non-impact printing allows printing an image without striking the printing media. Both inkjet and laser printers are non-impact printers.

OCR – OCR stands for ”Optical Character Recognition” and is a computerized process that enables us to convert a paper document into a computer file that you can edit or manipulate using a program such as Microsoft Word or Word Perfect..OCR used to be an expensive technology, but today is found on many of the All in One/MCF printer/copiers…  All OCR systems work in conjunction with your printer/scanner so that when we put the document face down on the scanner glass, it takes a picture of the document, but stores the
picture” in the form of a bitmap file/also known as an image file – and the OCR software then examines the patterns of dots in the image file and create a file that contains text that is represented as fonts and ASCII codes (once this is done most OCR system discard/delete the image/bitmap file)

PPM - Pages per minute, used to measure printing speed. A printer’s printing speed varies depending on print quality settings, print media, and page size.

SPOOL/SPOOLING: Basically, spooling is the process of placing data in a temporary working area for another program to process. Today, most of us here this term in reference to document s sent from our computer to our printer – known as print spooling.  This means that documents formatted for printing are stored usually in an area on a disk on our printers and retrieved and printed at the rate determined by that printer..  Printers typically can print only a single document at a time and require seconds or minutes to do so. With spooling, multiple processes can write documents to a print queue without waiting. As soon as a process has written its document to the spool device, the process can perform other tasks, while a separate printing process operates the printer

On a stand-alone computer, spooling is handled by the operating system. On a network computer, documents are sent to a print server, where they are spooled before being sent to the designated printer

(We will address how to clear you printer spooling if it freezes or gets jammed in next weeks blog on August 10th)

Two Sided Printing - A technology allowing printing on both sides of the paper (sometimes referred to as duplex printing).

USB - The USB (Universal Serial Bus) port is a popular I/O interface used for connecting computers and peripherals or other devices – USB connections are the most popular interface today for all printers and most other peripheral devices.

Glossary Of Printer Terms (Part 1 of 2):

Glossary Of Printer Terms (Part 1 of 2):

ALL-IN-ONE Printer – These are MultiFunction (MFC)/All-In-One printers which means they  can perform a variety of task including printing, scanning, copying and faxing, so that we don’t have to purchase individuals pieces of equipment.

Borderless Printing - Borderless printing allows a printer to output photos with no borders. This is extremely helpful for edge-to-edge printing.

Dot Matrix Printer - A dot matrix printer works by striking an ink ribbon to print tiny and closely spaced dots onto paper to form certain characters and simple images and is excellent for invoices, address labels and carbon copy invoices.

DPI - Dots per inch, used to indicate printing resolutions that are measured both horizontally and vertically. For example, a resolution of 4800 x 1200 dpi means 4800 dots across and 1200 dots down so that there are 5,760,000 dots per square inch in total.

Duplex Printing - A technology allowing printing on both sides of the paper (sometimes referred to as two-sided printing).

Impact Printing - Impact printing creates images and text by striking the print media/paper. Dot matrix printers adopt impact printing technology.

Inkjet Printer - Inkjet printers spray extremely tiny and precise ink droplets to create characters and graphics. Based on color mixing principles, inkjet printers utilize several ink cartridges containing different colors to produce vivid color images, which is why inkjet printers are often applied in picture-intensive printing.

Laser Printer - A laser printer is also non-impact and uses laser to adhere solid toner (typically black powder) instead of spraying liquid ink onto paper to create images. In a laser printer, the drum (looks like a cylinder), laser unit, toner cartridge and fuser are important components for printing.

LPT/ Parallel Port - LPT, also known as Parallel Port, is a type of archived port used in the past by printers; today almost all printers use USB connections.

Part 2 of this Blog will be posted on Friday, August 3rd, 2012.

How to Disable Background Printing in Word and on the Internet..

If you have applied background to your Word document but you do not want to show that in the printed copy of document – then disable the commands before you print.  And remember background printing uses additional system memory so to speed up printing, clear the Background printing check box.

To Disable background print in Word 97-2003

·         Go to Menu Bar, Tools, then click Options

·         Now click the Print Tab

·         Under printing options, select or clear the Background printing check box

·         When Background printing is on, you can continue to work in Word while you print,

To Disable background print in Word 2007

·         Click “Office” button > “Word Options”

·         Select “Advanced” tab

·         Then in right panel deselect check box for the option “Print in background” under Print section

·         Now click “OK”

To Disable background print in Word 2010

·         Click the File Tab, then choose options

·         Click on “Advanced” from left panel

·         Then in right panel deselect the check box followed by “Print in background” option under Print section and click “OK”

  

When you are on the Internet many websites have background colors or images that you might not want to print.  So, as with word, you may want  to disable the background printing..

To Disable background print when printing from a website on the Internet:

How to print from the Internet without backgrounds or images

·         Open a website that you to want to print out

·         In the Menu Bar go to Tools, then choose Internet Option

·         The Internet Options Dialog Box will now open

·         Click the advanced tab

·         Scroll Down and Find Printing section

·         Uncheck “Print background colors and images box

·         Hit OK or Apply button

Go to File, Print, Click Print (or simply use the Print icon on the toolbar)