Clearing Print Queues

While cancelling a print job is generally a case of right clicking on the printer, it doesn't always clear the job and you can be stuck with a job in the queue until you either restart the PC or the spooler. I use the following in a .bat file to clear all print jobs and restart the spooler. This is obviously a better solution in a networking environment where users don't like being told to restart their PC.

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

Portable Apps Weekly Roundup

Roundup of Portable Apps released May 7th to May 13th

• EraserDrop Portable 2.1.1
• SWI-Prolog Portable 6.0.2
• Eraser Portable 5.8.8.1
• CoolPlayer+ Portable 2.19.4
• PeaZip Portable 4.5.1
• Audacity Portable 2.0 Rev 2
• LibreOffice Portable 3.5.3
• Blender Portable 2.63a
• fre:ac Portable 1.0.20a Rev 2
• Windows Error Lookup Tool Portable 3.0.4

Portable Apps Weekly Roundup

Roundup of Portable Apps released May 1st to May 7th

• Converber Portable 2.3.1
• XnView Portable 1.98.8
• IrfanView Portable 4.33
• NSIS Portable 2.46.4
• CrystalDiskInfo Portable 4.6.2a
• Sumatra PDF Portable 2.1
• Foxit Reader Portable 5.3.0

Portable Apps Weekly Roundup

Roundup of Portable Apps released April 23rd to April 30th

• AquaSnap Portable 1.6.2
• CrystalDiskInfo Portable 4.6.2
• Notepad++ Portable 6.1.2
• Sumatra PDF Portable 2.0.1
• Foxit Reader Portable 5.1.4 Rev 2
• KeePass Password Safe Portable 1.22

Firefox 12 was also released last week, which ties in with the Firefox 3.6.x release now being officially discontinued and unsupported. I have tried out Firefox 12 Portable and it is working fine when deployed in a networked environment, running from a read-only share. (It copies Firefox Portable to the local temp folder and runs from there..)

Portable Apps Weekly Roundup

Roundup of Portable Apps released April 16th to April 20th

• MuseScore Portable 1.2
• RedNotebook Portable 1.4.0
• ToDoList Portable 6.4.6
• SMPlayer Portable 0.8.0
• Maxthon Portable 3.3.7.2
• Notepad2-mod Portable 4.2.25.720
• TinyTask Portable 1.50
• Finance Explorer Portable
• fre:ac Portable 1.0.20a
• System Explorer Portable 3.8.7
• CrystalDiskInfo Portable 4.6.0
• BleachBit Portable 0.9.2
• PeaZip Portable 4.5
• AquaSnap Portable 1.6.1
• LibreOffice Portable 3.5.2

One note regarding LibreOffice, this is from the Portable App page.

Running LibreOffice 3.5.2 may result in an error on some Windows XP machines. As a temporary workaround, install the current Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Runtime on the local machine to alleviate the issue. A permanent solution within the portable package itself is being worked on.