1 document pending in printer queue in System Tray that won't go away

Posted by White Phoenix on Super User See other posts from Super User or by White Phoenix
Published on 2012-02-08T21:59:03Z Indexed on 2012/04/09 5:33 UTC
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Edit: I didn't want to do it, but I restarted my computer - cleared the problem right away.

Though if I were running a Windows 2003/2008 server, I would hate to have to restart the domain controller just to get rid of this irritating problem. If I run into this problem again, I'm going to try that remove printer/reinstall printer thing.

Thanks for your help @Psychogeek. Points for your attempt.


Running Windows 7, 32-bit Professional. My printer is an HP OfficeJet Wireless 8500. It's connected to my network wirelessly through TCP/IP as a standalone device.

I was having some print problems awhile back and had to do some print spooler stuff as part of my troubleshooting (stopping the Print Spooler service, clearing the print spooler files from C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS and then restarting the service). I've finally narrowed it down to it being application specific, so that's that.

However, as a leftover from all that troubleshooting, my printer icon is stuck in the tray - when I mouseover the icon, Windows says that there is 1 document(s) pending for my username. However, when I open up that printer's queue, there's nothing in there.

I restarted the Printer Spooler service and also checked C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS if there's anything in there - nothing. I did a quick Google search and an answer from one of those "reps" at the Microsoft Socialnet site says for me to uninstall and reinstall the printer.

The funny thing is, when I send print jobs, they print just fine - that 1 mystery document stuck in queue isn't stopping anything from happening.

Short of having to do that, are there any other quick troubleshooting steps I may be missing?

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