How to empty the stuck print jobs queue, on Windows XP, from the command line !

So, I found this really useful article on the Microsoft website, on what to do when your Windows XP printer queue is stuck (as mine was, at the time) and I decided to write about it here.
I will not include the link to the microsoft page, because everyone knows that links to the Microsoft site simply won't work for more than a month, or probably a year, if you are very lucky!

Here are the commands you need to write. You can either save these in a .cmd file (Create a new text file, edit it with Notepad and change its extension to .cmd) or you can directly execute these in the Command Prompt.


net stop spooler
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.shd
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.spl
net start spooler

So, what is it that these commands do?
1. Stop the Printer Queue process.
2. Delete all shd files in the Windows directory
3. Delete all spl files in the Windows directory
4. Restart the Printer Queue process.

That's all! The only side-effect I noted is that the Printer Queue tray icon will stay there until your next reboot.
Thanks for reading!