Clearing Specific Print Queues

In a recent deployment, we ran into an issue where there had been print jobs stuck in the print que on some machines. We thought we had it fixed by running the following cmdlet:

Get-WmiObject Win32_Printer | where-object { $_.Name -like "*Workshare*" } | foreach-object { $_.CancelAllJobs() }

It worked on some machines, but others were not clearing. We did not want to delete print jobs to other printers. We had to find an alternative method to clear the jobs out. The script below was written to look at jobs in the %System32%\spool\printers directory. It will get a list of .SHD files. It will then open up the file and read the contents, filtering out everything except for alphabetical letters and then converting them to ASCII. Next, it searches the converted text for a partial or full name of the printer specified in the parameters, and marks it to be deleted. The script will then stop the print spooler, delete the files, and then restart the spooler. This script resolved our issue for making sure the specific printer was cleared of any print jobs. 

You can download the script from here.

 <#  
      .SYNOPSIS  
           Delete Print Jobs for Specific Printer  
        
      .DESCRIPTION  
           This script will delete print jobs for a specific printer. It gets a list of print jobs in the %SYSTEM32\Spool\PRINTERS directory. It reads the contents of the .SHD files, which have the names of the printer inside them. It then filters out those jobs that are not queued for the specified printer and deletes them. It stops the spooler before the deletion and then restarts it.   
        
      .PARAMETER PrinterName  
           Full or partial name of the printer to filter for  
        
      .EXAMPLE  
           Delete all printer jobs for printer named Workshare  
                powershell.exe -file ClearPrintSpooler.ps1 -PrinterName "Workshare"  
   
      .NOTES  
           ===========================================================================  
           Created with:      SAPIEN Technologies, Inc., PowerShell Studio 2017 v5.4.135  
           Created on:       2/22/2017 10:46 AM  
           Created by:       Mick Pletcher  
           Organization:  
           Filename:          ClearPrintSpooler.ps1  
           ===========================================================================  
 #>  
 [CmdletBinding()]  
 param  
 (  
      [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()][string]$PrinterName  
 )  
   
 Clear-Host  
 #Get list of print jobs  
 $Files = Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir"\system32\spool\printers" -Filter *.SHD  
 #Initialize variable to contain list of files to delete  
 $DeleteFiles = @()  
 foreach ($File in $Files) {  
      #Read contents of binary file  
      $Contents = [System.IO.File]::ReadAllBytes($File.FullName)  
      #Filter out all contents that are not A-Z and a-z in the ASCII number fields  
      $Contents = $Contents | Where-Object { (($_ -ge 65) -and ($_ -le 90)) -or (($_ -ge 97) -and ($_ -le 122)) }  
      #Convert string to ASCII  
      foreach ($Value in $Contents) {  
           $Output += [char]$Value  
      }  
      #Add base file name to the $DeleteFiles list if the $PrinterName is in the converted string  
      If ($Output -like "*$PrinterName*") {  
           $DeleteFiles += $File.BaseName  
      }  
 }  
 #Delete all files that met the searched criteria  
 foreach ($File in $DeleteFiles) {  
      #Stop Print Spooler Service  
      Stop-Service -Name Spooler -Force | Out-Null  
      #Create Filter to search for files  
      $FileFilter = $File + ".*"  
      #Get list of files  
      $Filenames = Get-ChildItem -Path $env:windir"\system32\spool\printers" -Filter $FileFilter  
      #Delete each file  
      foreach ($Filename in $Filenames) {  
           Remove-Item -Path $Filename.FullName -Force | Out-Null  
      }  
      #Start Print Spooler Service  
      Start-Service -Name Spooler | Out-Null  
 }