Completely Uninstall and Reinstall your Printer and ‘force’ XP to see new drivers:
Step 1
Disconnect the printer from the PC
Step 2
Go to the Control Panel and click on Add/Remove Programs. Highlight any Printer Software that is listed here. Select Remove.
Step 3
From the Control Panel, click on Printers & Faxes. Right click the printer in question and select Delete
Step 4
Look at the Toolbar. Select File, then Server Properties. Look in the Drivers tab. Highlight the printers drivers listed here and click on Remove for each one.
Step 5
Reboot the PC. Do NOT reconnect the printer!
Step 6
Go to the website of your printer manufacturer. Look for new XP drivers for your model. Download the correct software.
Step 7
Run the exe file you just downloaded. It should auto-start the installation program
Step 8
The software will tell you when to connect the printer.
Step 9
Once the software is installed and the printer connected, try a test page.
How to forcefully clear all jobs from a print queue
All administrators should know how to clear the print queue in Windows when all the jobs get ?stuck? and none of the jobs can be deleted. This will save you from having to restart a server (which is bad!).
In order to get the printing services back up and running, follow these steps:
1. Go to Start, Control Panel and Administrative Tools. Double click on Services icon.
2. Scroll down to the Print Spooler service and right click on it and select Stop. In order to do this, you need to be logged in as Administrator. At this point, no one will be able to print anything on any of the printers that are being hosted on this server.
3. Next you need to go to the following directory: C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\PRINTERS. Delete all the files in this folder. This will clear all print queues (it?s a good idea to first make sure there are no other print jobs being processed on any of the other printers on the server because doing this step will delete those jobs also)
4. Now you can go back to the Services console and right-click and choose Start for the Print Spooler service!
You can also go to a command prompt and type net stop spooler or net start spooler to start and stop the service.