what's this .exe?

[FieryPantone]

FM12, landscape-format three-pager, containing a title and a table: no problems distilling a .pdf

I daringly add table footnotes … distiller hangs, and Windows explains confidentially waiting for splwow64.exe

what's all this, then?

[Bob_Niland]

The process name splwow64.exe is apparently a contraction of
"SPooLer api for 32-bit Windows apps On Windows 64".
FM is still a 32-bit app, and needs to use this API to print on Win64.
I'm going to guess you are on Windows 7 64-bit.
By default, for performance reasons, splwow64 stays running after a print job completes.

MS Hotfix 2815716 might be relevant.

[Arnis Gubins · Accepted solution]

You can just kill the splwow64.exe process and it will re-start the next time you print.

Sometimes it gets held up by aggressive anti-virus software, so you may want to try exclude it in your A/V app.

[FieryPantone]

Thanks for the explanations! If the problem shows up again, I'll start by killing off the process.