Acrobat Pro 2020 opens endless notepad messages when you attemp to print an enrypted PDF

[James25403675wi8u]

I know re-distiling an Encrypted PDF is not supported. My issue is the fact the Adobe doesn't just print a single message but will open what seem to be endless copies of Notepad notifying you of this fact.

9 times out of 10 this will continue until the system runs out of memory and the user is required to do a hard reboot.

If I can get CMD open on the system multiple TASKKILL /F /FI "Notepad.exe" will get things working again until Adobe stops the spam.

Is there any way to stop this. I realize what the user(s) are doing isn't supported. But locking up the system isn't a suitable response.

[Bernd Alheit]

The user can close Notepad.

[James25403675wi8u]

I get that. The problem isn't that a single notepad instance is created. It just keeps on spawning them. Then the user is stuck playing wack-a-mole with Notepad until their system stops responding.

[try67]

This is not normal behavior. It usually only opens it once. Are you maybe trying to print it as a part of an Action? Also, what's your exact version of Acrobat, and OS?

[James25403675wi8u]

I can reproduce the issue on my install as well. It is attempting to print encrypted PDF with alot of pages, not part of an action. File Print - Acrobat PDF driver.  Acrobat will spawn a large number of notepad windows with the message

"%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
This PostScript file was created from an encrypted PDF file.
Redistilling encrypted PDF is not permitted.
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%"

Like I said I get that you can't do that. It's the system crashing number of notepad instances that get spawned that is the issue.

OS: Windows 10 Version 21H2 (x64)

Acrobat: Acrobat Pro 2020 20.005.30362

[try67]

Can you share with us a sample file that causes this issue?

[James25403675wi8u]

I'll have to see if I can find an example that exhibits the problem. The particular ones I know about are full of PPI and private information that I cannot share.

[James25403675wi8u]

I've been trying to find an example PDF that I could legally share and haven't found any. Incidentally this seems to only happen on PDF's with a large number of pages. I have a few single or 2 page ones that only throw up one instance of notepad. I am wondering if there is something in the larger PDF's that is causing it. Perhaps some embeded item. So far I haven't found anything common between them though.