Lexmark Printer Job Stuck in Queue? Here's How to Clear It

A single frozen document can hold up everything you send after it. These fixes work on Windows and Mac, and they start with the quickest ones first.

Why Your Lexmark Print Job Won't Move

You hit Print and nothing happens. The queue shows your document sitting at "Printing," "Sent to printer," or "Deleting," and clicking Cancel changes nothing. Anything you print after that just stacks up behind it.

The good news is that a stuck job almost never means the printer is broken. In most cases, one of these is to blame:

• The Windows Print Spooler froze or is holding on to a damaged job file
• The printer is waiting on you: a paper jam, an empty tray, a paper size mismatch, or a job held for a PIN
• The Lexmark driver is outdated, damaged, or installed twice
• The connection dropped between your computer and the printer over Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or USB
• A known driver conflict on some older Lexmark drivers (see Fix 6)

Go through the fixes below in order. Most stuck queues are cleared by the time you finish Fix 3.

Start at the Printer (It Takes Two Minutes)

Before you change anything on your computer, take a look at the printer itself. A job that looks frozen on your screen is often just waiting for something.

• Read the display. A paper jam, an open door, an empty tray, or a request to load a certain paper size will pause the whole queue until it's dealt with. If a code or message is showing, look it up in our Lexmark error codes and messages guide.
• Check for held jobs. Many Lexmark laser printers can hold a confidential job until someone types in a PIN at the printer. If Confidential Print was selected when the job was sent, it will wait under Held jobs on the control panel and won't print until it's released.
• Make sure the printer is online. If your computer lists the printer as Offline, jobs will pile up in the queue but never reach the printer. Our Lexmark printer offline guide walks through that fix.

Fix 1: Cancel the Stuck Job in Windows

On Windows 11:

1. Go to Start > Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners.
2. Click your Lexmark printer, then click Open print queue.
3. Right-click the stuck job and choose Cancel. Do the same for every job in the list.

On Windows 10: Go to Start > Settings > Devices > Printers & scanners, select your Lexmark printer, and click Open queue. Then cancel each job the same way.

Once the queue is empty, send a one-page test print. If the job won't go away and just sits at "Deleting," Windows is still holding on to it. Jump to Fix 3.

Fix 2: Cancel the Job on the Printer Itself

If the job has already made it to the printer, canceling it on your computer won't always stop it. On Lexmark models with a touchscreen:

1. Touch Cancel Job on the home screen, or press the Stop button on the keypad.
2. Select the job you want to get rid of.
3. Touch Delete Selected Jobs.
4. If you pressed the Stop button, touch Resume to go back to the home screen.

The exact button names can be a little different from one model to the next. If your printer doesn't have a touchscreen, look up your model's user guide on Lexmark's support site for its cancel steps.

Fix 3: Restart the Print Spooler and Clear Out Stuck Jobs

The Print Spooler is the Windows service that lines up your print jobs and passes them to the printer one at a time. When it locks up, jobs freeze in place and refuse to delete. Restarting the service and emptying the folder where it keeps waiting jobs clears most stuck queues for good.

Option A: Use the Services Window

1. Press Windows key + R, type services.msc, and press Enter.
2. Scroll down to Print Spooler, right-click it, and choose Stop.
3. Keep the Services window open. Open File Explorer and go to C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS. If Windows asks for permission, click Continue.
4. Delete everything inside the PRINTERS folder. Delete only the files in it, not the folder itself.
5. Go back to Services, right-click Print Spooler, and choose Start.
6. Double-click Print Spooler and confirm that Startup type is set to Automatic, so the service comes back on its own after a restart.

Heads up: Emptying this folder removes every waiting job for every printer on that computer, so you'll need to resend anything you still want printed. Your original documents aren't touched.

Option B: Use Command Prompt

If this keeps happening, three commands are faster than clicking through menus. Search for cmd in the Start menu, right-click Command Prompt, and choose Run as administrator. Then run these one at a time:

net stop spooler
del /Q /F /S "%systemroot%\System32\spool\PRINTERS\*.*"
net start spooler

Still Not Printing? Power Cycle Both Devices

If the queue is empty but the printer still won't respond, turn the printer off and wait at least 60 seconds. Turn it back on, restart your computer, and try printing again.

Fix 4: Let Windows Look for the Problem

Windows 11 has a built-in printer troubleshooter that runs a set of automatic checks and tries to repair what it finds.

1. Go to Start > Settings > System > Troubleshoot > Other troubleshooters.
2. Click Run next to Printer.
3. On newer versions of Windows 11, this opens the Get Help app. That's normal. Follow the prompts and pick your Lexmark printer when it asks.

When it finishes, try printing a test page. If the troubleshooter says it couldn't find a problem but your jobs still freeze, the driver is the next thing to look at.

Fix 5: Reinstall the Lexmark Driver the Right Way

If jobs keep getting stuck after you clear them, the driver is a likely suspect. A driver that's old, damaged, or installed more than once can send the printer data it doesn't know what to do with. Duplicate drivers often show up after a Windows update or after reconnecting the printer a different way, like switching from USB to Wi-Fi.

Simply removing the printer isn't enough, because Windows keeps the old driver files around. Here's how to do a clean reinstall:

1. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, click your Lexmark printer, and click Remove.
2. Press Windows key + R, type printui.exe /s /t2, and press Enter. This opens Print Server Properties on the Drivers tab.
3. Select each Lexmark driver tied to that printer, click Remove, choose Remove driver and driver package, and confirm.
4. Download the latest driver for your exact model from Lexmark's official support site. Many Lexmark laser printers use the Lexmark Universal Print Driver.
5. Install the driver, restart your computer, and add the printer back.

Stick to Lexmark's own website for drivers. Third-party driver download sites can bundle unwanted software or hand you the wrong version. For more on this, see our Lexmark printer driver guide. If the trouble started right after a Windows update, our guide to Lexmark printer issues after a Windows update may help too.

Fix 6: Jobs Frozen at "Sent to Printer"? Check Bidirectional Support

Lexmark has documented a specific version of this problem. Jobs freeze at "Printing" or "Sent to printer," or the Print Spooler crashes every so often and printing only comes back after a restart.

According to Lexmark, this is caused by the driver's language monitor, a component that constantly checks in with the printer to report its status. It affects the Lexmark Universal Print Driver version 2.6 or earlier (PCL 5, PCL XL, and PostScript), along with older model-specific drivers.

You have two ways to fix it:

• Update the driver. Moving to a current version of the Lexmark Universal Print Driver (see Fix 5) gets you off the affected versions. This is the better long-term fix.
• Turn off bidirectional support. Go to Settings > Bluetooth & devices > Printers & scanners, select your Lexmark printer, and open Printer properties. On the Ports tab, uncheck Enable bidirectional support, then click Apply.

Keep in mind that turning off bidirectional support means your computer stops getting live updates from the printer. Toner levels and error alerts from Lexmark's status monitoring tools may stop showing up. Printing itself works normally.

How to Clear a Stuck Lexmark Print Job on a Mac

1. Open the print queue. On recent versions of macOS, open Print Center from Applications > Utilities. It also opens on its own when you send a job. On older versions, go to System Settings (or System Preferences) > Printers & Scanners, select your Lexmark printer, and click Open Print Queue.
2. Delete the job. Select the stuck job and click Delete Job.
3. Resume the printer if it's paused. A paused printer holds every job. Select your printer and click Resume.

Still Stuck? Reset the Printing System

This is the Mac's version of a clean start. Open System Settings > Printers & Scanners, Control-click in the printer list, and choose Reset Printing System.

Before you do this, know that it removes every printer on your Mac, along with saved printer presets and your print history. You'll need to add your Lexmark printer again afterward. Our Lexmark printer setup guide for Windows and Mac covers that step.