How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in the Windows Print Queue – How-To Geek

December 15th, 2011 by James No comments »

How to Cancel or Delete a Stuck Print Job in the Windows Print Queue

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If you tried to print, but the job just got stuck in the queue without being able to cancel it, you’re experiencing a stuck print job. There’s a simple way to clear out the print queue, but it’s not always the most obvious thing. Here’s how to do it.

Note: we encountered this problem earlier today but forgot to take a screenshot of the print queue with a stuck job, so we substituted with a picture of a regular job sitting in the queue.

Clearing a Stuck Print Job in Windows

The first thing you’re going to want to do is open up Services through the start menu search, find Print Spooler in the list, and click the Stop button.

Now open up Windows Explorer and put this into the location bar:

%windir%\System32\spool\PRINTERS

You might be prompted for UAC to allow access to the folder, which you’ll want to accept. Now you’ll see a bunch of files in the folder, and you’re going to want to delete all of them. Don’t delete the PRINTERS folder itself, just the files.

Now go back to Services and click the Start button to start up the service again.

At this point your stuck print job should be gone.

Popularity: 3% [?]

JAW DROPPING Space Station time lapse!

November 13th, 2011 by James No comments »

JAW DROPPING Space Station time lapse!.

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Popularity: 3% [?]

GE: Solar panels will be as easy to install as new roof

November 13th, 2011 by James No comments »

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20125872-54/ge-solar-panels-will-be-as-easy-to-install-as-new-roof/

Popularity: 3% [?]

No wind? No problem with giant battery bank

November 13th, 2011 by James No comments »

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20126515-54/no-wind-no-problem-with-giant-battery-bank/

Popularity: 2% [?]

Best Buy plugs in to home energy tech

November 13th, 2011 by James 1 comment »

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-57317973-54/best-buy-plugs-in-to-home-energy-tech/

Popularity: 4% [?]

MyFord Touch gets graphics, performance update

November 13th, 2011 by James No comments »

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-31166_7-57318217-271/myford-touch-gets-graphics-performance-update/

Popularity: 3% [?]

Akitio intros personal MyCloud Duo NAS server

November 13th, 2011 by James No comments »

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-57320711-1/akitio-intros-personal-mycloud-duo-nas-server/

Popularity: 2% [?]

Maximum PC | How to Repair a Faulty Windows Installation Without Reformatting

September 5th, 2011 by James No comments »

Maximum PC | How to Repair a Faulty Windows Installation Without Reformatting.

Corrupted system files don’t have to ruin your day

Nothing will put a crimp in your computing style quite like a Windows error. Although Microsoft’s OS has gotten exponentially more stable over the years, it’s still very possible for Windows system files to become corrupt, which can cause your system to slow down, freeze, or (in the worst case) refuse to load your operating system at all.

When you encounter a Windows error, your first instinct may be to back up your data, grab the ol’ installation disk, and weep silently as you press the Reformat button. We’re here to tell you there’s another way. Still back up your data, of course, but by following this guide, you might well be able to repair your Windows install without dropping the nuke.

Note: Though these guides are written for Windows 7, a very similar process will work for Vista or XP.

» Read more: Maximum PC | How to Repair a Faulty Windows Installation Without Reformatting

Popularity: 6% [?]

How To Activate Windows 7 Offline After Reinstalling It

June 14th, 2011 by James No comments »

How To Activate Windows 7 Offline After Reinstalling It.

Due to widespread piracy of the Windows operating system, Microsoft implemented strict measures since the advent of Windows Vista to ensure that piracy can be curbed. This includes adding a minimum limit to the number of times a key can be used for activating Windows. While this might restrict piracy, it can become quite inconvenient for users. If you for instance run out of the activation limit of your Windows 7 key due to frequent re-installation of the operating system, you will have to either call Microsoft support for resolving the issue or purchase a new activation key. A better alternative to repeatedly activating Windows and running out of your allocated limit can be to use 7Token Manager. It’s a one-click solution to backup all important information and then restore it to activate Windows 7 offline.

With 7Token Manager, you can back up Windows 7 activation key along with certificates and tokens to restore them later on freshly installed Windows in order to bypass the restriction imposed on number of times one can activate Windows through single license. Since you can activate Windows online for only 10 times with one license key, it fetches all the information which Microsoft Windows online activation wizard fetches from your system while activating Windows and backs them up. After installing Windows, you can restore all the information with license key to activate your copy of Windows without going through online activation process. This not only makes Windows activation process easier but saves you from wasting another usage count of purchased license key.

To backup Windows key, certificates and tokens, click Backup.

7Tokens Manager by Josh Cell

All information will get saved in a Backup directory residing in 7Token Manager. It can be quite useful to backup not just your Windows key but also server certificates with the help of this app for easily restoring them later.

Backup Folder

To restore your information, make sure that the Backup folder is present within the 7TokenManager EXE file directory and click Restore.

Restored

7Token Manager works on Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download 7Token Manager

Popularity: 15% [?]

How to Recover Windows and Software Keys from a Broken Computer – How-To Geek

June 3rd, 2011 by James No comments »

How to Recover Windows and Software Keys from a Broken Computer – How-To Geek.

Product keys are one of the most important parts of your computer. Unfortunately, most people don’t have them backed up. Here is how you can recover your product keys in case your computer crashes.

The methods described below will also work to backup your product keys before your computer crashes. If you are the cautious type, and you should be, use the tools described below to backup your software product keys before it’s to late.

Copy the needed files

The first think you need to do is recover some files from your broken computer’s hard drive. To do that you can either pull out the hard drive and plug it into a second computer using a spare hard drive connector or use a SATA USB docking station like the one below.

If you don’t have any SATA openings and don’t have a SATA docking station you can recover the files with a live Linux USB drive too. Use whatever distribution you feel comfortable with because you just need to copy a folder to the drive.

If you are using Linux, boot the broken machine from the drive, and copy this folder to the USB drive.

C:\Windows\System32\config

Our config folder was only 140 MB in size which will easily fit on most USB drives. Yours may be slightly bigger but you will need to take into account the ~700 MB of space needed for the Linux files.

Once you have the folder, go to another computer running Windows to use the free utility to recover your keys.

Use ProduKey to Recover Your Product Key

ProduKey is made by our friends at Nirsoft and will allow you to recover your product keys from a running version of Windows just the same as a copied C:\Windows\System32\config folder.

Start by downloading ProduKey from the link below and extract the exe file to a place of your choosing. Launch the program and it will immediately recover the available product keys from your current Windows installation.

Now may be a good time to save your current product keys somewhere safe.

To recover the keys from the broken copy of Windows, drop down the file menu and choose select source.

From the new window select “load the product keys from external Windows directory” and then browse to your saved Windows folder.

If you used a live Linux disk to recover the config folder you will need to manually make Windows and System32 folders and then place your config folder inside of them for the keys to be read.

If you are using a USB docking station, you can also just select “load the product keys of external Windows installations from all disks currently plugged to your computer” and the drive will be scanned automatically.

ProduKey will now show you all the keys it was able to find from your broken computer which makes it very handy when needing to re-install.

To make sure your keys stay safe click the save icon and save a text file of your product keys. We would recommend emailing yourself the text file or saving it to an off site location for safe keeping.

ProduKey Download

Popularity: 13% [?]