A client has a USB printer at her workplace and has historically sent documents to its queue from home. When she arrives at work and connects to the printer, the queued documents normally print. After replacing her computer about four months ago, this worked initially, but now the print queue is cleared whenever the computer restarts. She can no longer queue documents from home for later printing at work. We have tried creating new queues, using different drivers, and manually clearing C:WindowsSystem32spoolPRINTERS, but nothing has helped. What could be causing the queue to be cleared on reboot?
3 Answers
Check whether the computer is being reset or restored to a clean image during reboot. Group policy, endpoint-management software, or a scheduled cleanup task could be deleting the spool files or recreating the printer configuration. Also verify that the printer is not configured with an option such as “Use Printer Offline.”
Since the printer is USB and only connected at the workplace, confirm that the queue is using the correct local port and that the print spooler service is allowed to retain jobs after a restart. If the jobs vanish even with the queue paused, something outside the printer driver—most likely system management or cleanup software—is removing them.
As a test, manually pause the print queue before restarting and see whether the jobs survive. Avoid rebooting while documents are waiting if possible. Fast Startup or putting the machine to sleep might preserve the session, although that is more of a workaround than a real fix.
That unusual workflow was intentional and had worked for years. We’ll test pausing the queue and investigate what changed after the computer replacement.