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Acrobat Distiller 9 crashes on start up - why?

Dakar74
Registered: Jun 15 2009
Posts: 9

I recently bought a new notebook with Intel Pentium dual-core processor T3400 and Windows Vista Home Premium pre-installed.

This weekend, I have been installing some software, including Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro and Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended.

Actually, I bought Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro just for having Acrobat Distiller (not: Distiller Server), to use in book publishing with Corel Ventura 10 and PostScript. The version I got is Acrobat Distiller 9.

However, when I now start up Acrobat Distiller 9 it shows up for one or two seconds and then crashes (just vanishes from the screen without an error message).

I found the same problem described for earlier versions of Distiller (in XP and Mac) in various online fora, but thus far I have not seen a solution described anywhere.

It seems to be a common (and long-standing) problem, certainly there must be a fix?

(I already uninstalled an reinstalled Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro and also tried "Repair Acrobat Installation" under "Help" in the programme. To no avail. I signed in with another user account and the same happened. That's not it either.)

Let me know if you have an idea. Thanks.

My Product Information:
Acrobat Pro Extended 9.0, Windows
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
Does this problem occur with Acrobat 9 (not just Distiller) as well? If so, do you receive any error message upon launch of Acrobat 9? Is this the version of Acrobat 9 that ships with CS4?

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

Dakar74
Registered: Jun 15 2009
Posts: 9
Hi, Ikassuba. There's no problem launching Acrobat 9 (I haven't fully tried it yet, but seems okay). Just "Print PDF" "From File" doesnt' work in Acrobat 9 either (as it tries to access Distiller, I suppose).

I didn't buy CS4. Just bought Acrobat 9 and Photoshop separately.
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
Bring up task manager - is a task called Acrotray.exe running?

Check to make sure the printer port is set correctly:

1 - Open Control Panel / Printers

2 - Right click on the Adobe PDF printer icon

3 - One of the visible tabs will be named PORTS

4 Click on it, check the "Documents\*pdf - Adobe PDF Port"

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

Dakar74
Registered: Jun 15 2009
Posts: 9
Acrotray.exe is running in the Task Manager.

And "Documents\*pdf - Adobe PDF Port" was already checked in Ports.
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
Did you activate your copy of Acrobat 9?

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

Dakar74
Registered: Jun 15 2009
Posts: 9
Got Distiller to work. Seems the problem was with software activation/licensing. I got different software - and a free update to Acrobat 9 Pro Extended - from my merchant and installed it. Distiller now does not crash anymore when starting it up and appears (thus far) stable.

However, I still get an error message at start up:

Adobe PostScript software version: 3018.101
Adobe PDF Settings file read error in PDFX4 2008.joboptions:
/CheckCompliance out of range

A quick web search shows that this is also not a new problem. Some say that Distiller is not able to create PDF/X4 files and that the error is thus a bug in Distiller itself. Is that true? (I can't find a joboptions file of that name in my system ...)

Do I need to do anything about it or can I just leave it?
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
The PDF/X-4 joboption doesn't ship with Acrobat 9 -- perhaps it is from a different Adobe application.

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
Hi, I am running windows XP and Acrobat Acrobat Distiller 7. All was OK until I installed Acrobat 9. Distiller crashes every time I try to use it, I tried to go back to Version 7 but now Distiller 7 does the same thing, crashes and cannot distill ps files. Can you help me?
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
georgesion wrote:
Hi, I am running windows XP and Acrobat Acrobat Distiller 7. All was OK until I installed Acrobat 9. Distiller crashes every time I try to use it, I tried to go back to Version 7 but now Distiller 7 does the same thing, crashes and cannot distill ps files. Can you help me?
Are you getting any error messages? Did you activate your license of Acrobat 9?

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
No error messages, Distiller just doesn't start. The rest of the software works perfectly and I did activate the license.
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
georgesion wrote:
No error messages, Distiller just doesn't start. The rest of the software works perfectly and I did activate the license.
Have you tried running the Help > Repair Acrobat Installation command in Acrobat 9?

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
Got this message:

EventType : BEX P1 : acrodist.exe P2 : 9.0.0.332 P3 : 4850b770
P4 : AcroDistDLL.dll P5 : 9.0.0.332 P6 : 4850b762 P7 : 0015ec6f
P8 : c0000409 P9 : 00000000
georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
Can you help?
Merlin
Acrobat 9ExpertTeam
Registered: Mar 1 2006
Posts: 766
Hi,

you're talking about Acrobat 9…
Did you update it ?
It's currently in 9.3.1 version.

;)
georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
yes, updated, gives me that message, I sent it to Microsoft but no answer!
georgesion
Registered: Jul 1 2010
Posts: 6
is anybody there who can help me?
lkassuba
ExpertTeam
Registered: Jun 28 2007
Posts: 3636
georgesion wrote:
is anybody there who can help me?
Try checking your decimal separator
1. Open Control Panel/"Regional and Language Settings" dialog
2. Click the "Customize" button on "Regional Options" tab
3. Choose period as "Decimal Symbol". Press OK, Apply
4. Launch Distiller

Lori Kassuba is an AUC Expert and Community Manager for AcrobatUsers.com.

Avis Austin
Registered: Aug 22 2010
Posts: 2
Before some days I used this software. It was very helpful for me. Some time it was give me some error but coz of other software this error is no more.

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