How to run the printer troubleshooter programmatically

Question

I replaced the toner on my printer with a third-party cartridge a while ago, and ever since then whenever I try to print something windows will give me an error saying "your printer needs your attention". I've discovered that after running the windows troubleshooter for the printer any job in the queue will print. (The troubleshooter won't find any errors, but by running it the jobs will print.)

So right now whenever I print something, I rightclick on the printericon in the system tray, open devices and printers, right click on the printer, and run the troubleshooter.

That takes a lot of clicks. Is there a way I can do this through something like a script that I can pin as an executable in the taskbar?

And if this script can just run the part of the troubleshooter fixes my problem and do it entirely in the background that would be even better.

Answer 1

I have found that 3rd party cartridges (even when supposed to be compatible) are not fully structurally compatible.

Sometimes they are missing a lug that activates a micro switch or similar. If you still have the old one, just compare them physically and glue something on the new one.

Answer 2

There are apps that allow you to play scripts to emulate mouse clicks and/or keystrokes. In the (distant) past I have used SendKeys (part of Windows) for this. A complete package that accepts both keys and mouse clicks is AutoIt. AutoIt is freeware.

To make things easier, several packages allow you to record the mouse clicks, to play back later. Here are a couple of examples:

GS Auto Clicker

Auto-Click-Script (available on Microsoft Store)

Note: I have not tested these packages, so I give offer any guarantees. Also, regardless of which you use, it may take some effort to ensure all clicks are delivered to the right window at the right time.

Answer 3

I finally figured this out.

The way to systemically fix the printer queue is to restart the print spooler service.

This can be done with

net stop spooler
net start spooler

To set this to automatically run on every print job, I did the following:

1. enabled print logging in the event viewer (followed this tutorial)
2. set up a new task in the task scheduler with the following properties:

• run with highest privileges
• Triggers:
  • On event
  • Log: Microsoft-Windows-PrintService/Operational
  • Source: PrintService
  • EventID: 800
• Actions:
  • Start a Program: "net stop spooler"
  • Start a Program: "net start spooler"

The whole thing now runs automatically whenever I print. Zero extra clicks needed.