Adobe Acrobat DC crashes Windows 10 when printing to HP Designjet

[mdpolan]

Microsoft (10 64 bit) recently fielded an update that disabled my HP designjet 500 from printing. Running a test page produced an simple print error message as well as from Adobe DC.  Upon research I found that an recent Microsoft update (KB4560960) was the culprit. While attempting to determine the problem I deleted Acrobat DC as well as the HP drivers and reinstalled them several times. I also tested the printer on a different computer and replace the USB cable all in an attempt to correct the issue. The alleged work around was to uninstall the Microsoft update. Subsequently I can now print to the HP Designjet from other programs but not Adobe DC. Every time I attempt to print I get a Windows system crash with a kernal exception ( blue screen of death). I have completely uninstalled Adobe DC and reinstalled, along with updating  and repair of DC but have not found a solution. I updated Windosw 10 today with KB4567512 ( Microsoft indicates that this would resolve the issue with the KB4560960 update) but again no improvement. DC will print to my other printers just not by big plotter. 

[Dov Isaacs]

There is absolutely nothing in any Adobe software including the various flavours of Acrobat and Reader that can directly “crash” Windows. They are application programs that do not run in kernal mode that could cause such BSOD (Blue Screens of Death) system crashes. What is likely happening is that Acrobat calls the printer driver for your printer and the printer calls various system functions where the crash occurs. There have been numerous reports of such crashes during printing, not limited to Acrobat, since Microsoft released Windows 10 version 2004 over the last two months. Microsoft has acknowledged “issues” and supposedly is working to fix them.

This coming Tuesday, July 14, is the monthly Patch Tuesday which may offer yet more fixes to Windows 10 version 2004 that may help resolve the problem. The problem is not Acrobat, not your USB cable, and not the printer. You may find that HP needs to update their printer driver to coordinate with whatever fixes Microsoft issues (or a driver update might actually come with the Windows update directly).

To answer a further question as to why such crashes happen with some applications and content and not others, the basic answer is that applications such as those from Adobe, especially with large and very graphically-complex pages) are stressing the drivers in terms of graphics functions and quantity of graphic objects in a much greater manner than simpler applications (such as Word's printing of a simple memo) might do.

Please let us know what happens after Tuesday's patches (usually start coming out after noon PDT).

[mdpolan]

Thank you for the explanation. I will update you if and when the problem is resolved. HP considers these printers obsolete and as such the driver is over 10 years old. I doubt tha HP will bother to invest in an update. The HP of today is definately not the HP of yester year. I should know since I was a employee of the real HP servicing there minis( HP 3000's and 1000's) in the 80's in NYC.

[Dov Isaacs]

FWIW, I still have a 25 year old Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 5M PostScript Level 2 printer that still works fine. They don't make them today like they used to (and the current LaserJets use CloneScript instead of Adobe PostScript!)  😒