Deleting Prints From Remote PC

[moggy]

I often get calls like "the printer is not printing and we can't delete the print queue because the prints which are stuck are another users".

The printer concerned is a locally connected colour A3 printer.

I usually finish having to go down to the PC, log off the current user, log on as admin and delete the 'stuck' prints, then hand back to the user.

Is there a way I can delete the printers queue remotely say from a run command, i.e. is there a well known path which will give me remote access to the queue to delete the offending files?

TIA

[strawberry]

restart the print spooler service?

[Iain]

Would Prnqctl.vbs found in \windows\system32 help?

Iain.

[webman]

Go to the UNC path of the machine, Printers and Faxes, then open the print queue from there?

[User3204]

If it's a local printer, can you not give them print management access ?

Then they can clear it themselves... in theory

[Sylv3r]

If it's a local printer, can you not give them print management access ?

Then they can clear it themselves... in theory

Yep, that works here.

[Galway]

Use computer management to remotely restart the spooler.

Or delete them as webman says.

[OutToLunch]

If it is an odd file/corrupt job/windows randomness that is causing a problem with the spooler, restarting the service won't always fix it. You may also need to clear files from the spool directory.

In a batch file -

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

You can psexec this remotely, or you could wrap an autoit script/tool of your choice around it and set it to 'runas' a local admin so other users on the PC can run it and fix the queue themself.

[moggy]

Thanks guys for all the answers. Plenty for me to go at!