Stuck print job in the desktop printer causes Mac to reboot "frozen"
It happens sometimes that your lab Macintosh would boot into a "frozen" state out of the blue. It boots fine and when the desktop shows up the machine is totally unresponsive. There were no signs of trouble before.

This is usually caused by a print job stuck in the desktop printer. Someone before you was trying to print something out but for whatever reason the printout would not come out so they walked away from the machine not being aware that there may be a problem.

You may verify this by visually examining your desktop printers. If there is one that has a "busy icon" on it, such as the example below, there is your problem!

Busy printer icon
The solution
The solution to the problem is rather simple. Reboot the computer with Extensions off. Click here for instructions.
Turning the Extensions off disables most Macintosh functions including printing. Once the computer is up you can simply double click on that desktop printer and open it like a folder. You will see the stuck job(s) inside the window. Click on the job to select it and then click the trash icon as shown on the right. Remove all the jobs and close the window. Now reboot your Mac normally and it should be working again.

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