Acrobat freezes when printing to Adobe PDF

[Guest]

Adobe DC "Classic" installed by Dell.  (They will not support software)

When printing to Adobe pdf from any windows application, the progress bar goes about half way and then it freezes.  The application freezes, too.

It does not matter how large the file is.  I have to use task manager to end the process and the application.

We have four identical computers, brand new Dell precisions - print to adobe pdf works just fine on the other three.  they are set up almost identically as far as software goes.  It only happens on this one.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled Adobe

Converting from a file seems to work just fine. (using the adobe application)

All four computers have Vipre antivirus

[Adorobat]

Hi kenlotterman,

Could you please try below mention steps and see if that changes this behavior:

1- Check for Updates, launch Acrobat>click Help>then select Check for Updates

2- If installing updates doesn't work, try to change following setting- launch Acrobat>select Edit menu>click Security(Enhanced)>uncheck the box next to Enable Protected Mode at startup>then click OK.

Relaunch Acrobat and then try to print.

Please note: Disabling Protected Mode is for troubleshooting purpose only, and not recommended. Please turn the feature back on after troubleshooting is complete.

In addition to that, let me know the version of Acrobat installed on your computer?

Which Operating System is installed on the machine?

[Guest]

Step one did not reslove the problem

There is no "Enable Protected Mode at startup"

The version of Acrobat is DC

The operating system is Windows 7 64 bit

[Adorobat]

Hi kenlotterman,

I am sorry for the inconvenience.

Could you please try the following steps:

Launch Acrobat>click Edit>Preferences>Security( Enhanced)>uncheck the box which says Enable Enhanced Security>click OK and relaunch Acrobat and then try to print to Adobe PDF and see if that works.

Could you please confirm the dot version of Acrobat DC installed on the machine?

To check the dot version of Acrobat, launch Acrobat>click Help menu>select About Adobe Acrobat 

Are you able to use Create PDF option in ACROBAT tab in MS Word for ex.?

[Guest]

that solution did not work.

see attached for version and screenshot

Yes, i can "convert" a word doc to pdf using Acrobat.  I cannot use the "Adobe PDF printer"

[Adorobat]

Hi kenlotterman,

Could you please try repairing Acrobat and see if that resolves the issue.

Launch Acrobat>click Help menu>select Repair Installation. When repair is finish, reboot the computer, then try to print.

If that doesn't work, try to remove Adobe PDF printer and add it again manually.

1- To remove Adobe PDF printer: Go to Control Panel>select Devices and Printers>right click Adobe PDF>click Remove device.

2- Restart the computer.

3- To add Adobe PDF printer manually, please follow the steps given in Solution#3 in the link given below :

     Manually installing  PDF Printer

[Guest]

Sorry, those steps did not solve the problem.  But it's interesting that with one of the drivers I chose during add printer, I got an error, and after that, it seemed like all the others resulted in the process appearing as if it worked, but no pdf was created.  After uninstalling and reinstalling, I created a test windows profile and tried it there.  It was the first time I saw "Acrobat Distiller has stopped working". subsequent tests resulted in the behavior described originally.

[Adorobat]

Hi kenlotterman,

Thank you for trying the steps.

Could you please try removing Acrobat using Cleaner tool and see if that helps:

1- Download and run Cleaner tool from here: Download Adobe Reader and Acrobat Cleaner Tool - Adobe Labs 

2- Restart the computer.

3- Download and install Acrobat DC from here: Download Pro or Standard versions of Acrobat DC, XI, or X

[jimbobfruitbat]

This worked for me. I was trying to print to Microsoft PDF (Windows 10) and it was freezing each time. I followed the above, disabling Security(Enhanced) and now it works!

[PositronicTanner · Accepted solution]

My mom experienced the SAME problem. Your pictures, kenlotterman, are exactly what we had. try this:

Control Panel -> Devices and Printers

Right click Adobe PDF -> Printer Properties (not Properties by itself)

General tab -> Preferences button -> Adobe PDF Settings tab

Adobe PDF Security: None, change to Reconfirm Security for each job, click Edit...

Box pops up, just click cancel.

Click OK, and close everything. Try to use the PDF printer now. We were back to normal.

Uninstalling, re-installing, repairing, changing profile permissions, nothing else worked. Blaming anti-virus or windows updates, doesn't help either (hint hint Adobe).

[byronomo]

I was experiencing similar symptoms as described by OP with the exception that I was able to close the "Creating Adobe PDF" dialog by clicking the close button ("X") for the dialog box. Additionally, in my case the print jobs were stuck in the print spooler and couldn't be cancelled and deleted from there using the options available in the print queue dialog (but they could be deleted by stopping the spooler service and manually deleting the items in the print queue).

An additional symptom (that I later found was related to this issue) is that I was unable to scan to PDF using my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500 scanner. At the point in the scanning process when the PDF would usually be rendered, the ScanSnap software returned a "Failed to communicate with the ScanSnap" error box and the PDF was not created.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit.

I tried (to no avail):

• uninstalling/reinstalling acrobat and then updating acrobat
• SFC /scannow (reported no issues)
• Uninstalling/reinstalling ScanSnap Manager software (re-installed with no issues)
• Deleting and manually installing the Adobe PDF Printer
• Changing drivers for the Adobe PDF printer
• Screaming
• Crying

Ultimately, what put me on the right path (and there is NO NEED for others to do this) is installing a different PDF rendering software (trial version) which ALSO returned an error when attempting to render the PDF using the Print to PDF function.   However, that error was one that was documented on the support pages for that software and one of the possible fixes that was recommended ended up solving this issue for me.

(there were a NUMBER of things I tried based on those support pages before discovering the below, which I've omitted)

It was the Windows 7 "Disk Cleanup" tool.  Specifically, it was the "Temporary Files" that needed to be cleaned up.   Clearing the Temporary Files MAY cause other issues, so use caution and backup accordingly before trying this.  In my case it (seemed to ) force a Windows update that wouldn't complete until shutting the computer off during the update that was "stuck" on 100% and subsequently booting into safe mode with networking and then rebooting again.   However, immediately after clearing the Temporary Files the print to PDF issue went away.  It also continued to work after the aforementioned reboots.

I still don't know what the precise issue was, but it SEEMED to be related to a Windows User Access permissioning for files within that Temp folder that were cleared out when I ran Disk Cleanup.

I hope this helps someone else because dealing with this issue was incredibly frustrating!

[Angeles5E15]

I didn't r my issue yet but you made me laugh hard. Hope you fixed your problem. 

[divStar]

Since I ran into the same problem with Adobe Acrobat X Pro (on Windows 10), what @PositronicTanner said, actually helped, but it seems I had to ensure, that no document information (what you see in "document name") is written into the file, because else it seemed to have trouble with Unicode (my guess as a software developer). I think this, because printing a test page to a PDF worked just fine.

[Jeremy Ryan]

Same issue on Windows 11.  Different solution.  After all other troubleshooting efforts failed, the AcroCleaner worked!  

Step 1.   Uninstall Acrobat

Step 2.  Run the Adobe AcroCleaner Tool (https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Labs/cleaner.html)

Step 3.  Reboot computer

Step 4.  Reinstall Acrobat

Step 5.  Print a test PDF!

Hope this helps.