Attempted to be Unpaused

“Help! In the logs I see an error message that says “A print job was attempted to be unpaused while being held and was deleted by the system”. What does this mean?”

When a user prints a document PaperCut will pause the print job temporarily for analysis and will hold the print job for longer if Hold/Release is enabled. This error message may be logged if PaperCut detects that a print job was released outside of its control by another process. The PaperCut server may then attempt to delete the print job before it finishes processing, hence the enigmatic error message: “A print job was attempted to be unpaused while being held and was deleted by the system”.

This can occur for a few different reasons which we have tried to document below.

Are end users manually trying to resume their job?

If you suspect that end users are cancelling or resuming held print jobs on their own, then try configuring security on the Windows Print Queue to remove “Manage Documents” rights from the Creator/Owner user. Note that there’s no need to make this change on a Find-Me print queue, as the job will be “printed” to the nul port anyway and will simply disappear.

Is the printing happening through the Windows LPR/LPD service?

This may happen if you are printing to a Windows print queue using the Windows LPD Service which is sometimes the case when printing from an older system like AS400. For customers with PaperCut version 15.1 and above, replace Windows LPD service with the PaperCut LPD Service which is fully supported.

Is another print management app interfering?

Occasionally we see this occur when there are 3rd party software programs with the ability to manage the Windows Print queue like Printer Logic, Print Audit 6, Xerox Desktop Print Experience, Teramind, Argos, or Zscaler. Please make sure that you have not configured this program to purge active or held print jobs after a certain number of hours. It may also be the case that this application could conflict with PaperCut as both applications try to manage print jobs in the queue, so try disabling the application as a test to see if it resolves the issue.

Is Data Loss Protection software canceling print jobs?

We have heard of other scenarios where customers had Host Data Loss Protection software like McAfee HDLP. In this case, the symptoms would include jobs being printed successfully but not being logged, and the account in question not being debited. To test to see if this is the root cause, disable HDLP, and re-test.

Still have questions?

Let us know! We love chatting about what’s going on under the hood. Feel free to leave a comment below or visit our Support Portal for further assistance.