Windows 7

Uninstall PDFCreator with all settings, reboot and install it again. It should works. Tested here successfully.

Dear Frank

I am very sory, but you are wrong!

PDF creator ISNT working under windows7! - And the problem is not the INSTALLATION, but the actual pdf printing process - since the program isnt doing anything at all! - it isnt even working with the newer version of ghost script, so it is definitively a problem of the program.

Btw: I WAS a user of pdf creator, but since its absolutely useless, I changed to "FreePDF" - and this one is working absolutely properly on any OS (of Microsoft) I have used the last few years.
And it's free too.

Hello,

please let me ask two questions: Have you updated from Vista to windows 7? And if so, have you tried reinstalling PDFCreator?

As written in the FAQ, Windows 7 rebuilds the permissions in a way that breaks PDFCreator (and also FreePDF and all others I know that work this way). Reinstalling does work here. I had the same after upgrading and I am successfully running PDFCreator on W7 now.

So it cannot be that PDFCreator is not working in general on Windows 7.

kind regards,
Philip

Hello,

I have the same problem after upgrading from vista to 7.

(and also after re-installing PDFCreator)

When selecting print to PDFCreator (from Quarkexpress) nothing happens.

On occasions, after some changes in settings the creator suddenly turns up with all the previous vain attempts, and does them all properly.

So the print commands have been stuck somewhere in the spooler.

Any Ideas?

Thanks

Hello,

the printer driver stores the Data in the PDFCreator Temp folder and then calls PDFCreator. So no print jobs are lost, but you will have to call PDFCreator manually.

Which version did you install? (Just to make sure it is the latest)

Did you reboot between uninstalling and reinstalling?

kind regards,
Philip

Thanks Pillip,

It works now.

had re-installed without reboot between uninstalling and reinstalling.

Hans

great to hear! It sometimes happens, that the printer system is not cleanly shut. this isn't a problem normally, but if we are replacing a driver, this can cause trouble, so a reboot is the safest way.

kind regards,
Philip

I' ve been running into the same problem.

I've both a fresh installation of Windows 7 Ultimate and of PDFCreator.

When I try to print something, nothing happens. The same holds, if I try to start PDFCreator.exe directly from filesystem.(both with user's or administrator's rights).

Michael

Edit: I made another try:

Uninstall/reboot/install/reboot works fine, until ...

I'd try to print a Webpage from IE

In that case I get an error message:

Error Nummer 481

Module modMain

Procedure: StartProgram

Line 51720

After that PDF Creator cannot be startet.

hello!

I am having the same problem as Michael.  I have a fresh installed W7 Enterprise and fresh install of PDFCreator.  It got the 481 error when I try to print web page that contain graphics.  I tried remove the PDFCreator, reboot and reinstall and the problem is same.  I attach the error log that generated by the PDfCreator in this email for reference.

cw.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

PDFCreator - www.pdfforge.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Errorprotocol

----------------------------------------------------------------------

PDFCreator 0.9.8 - Error message

----------------------------------------------------------------------

ERROR DESCRIPTION:

Error-Nr: 481 (Invalid picture)

Modul: modMain

Procedure: StartProgram

Line: 51720

Date/Time: 11-19-2009 / 11:48:02

----------------------------------------------------------------------

CALLSTACK:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

SYSTEMINFO:

VerMajor: 6 -> Unknown 'VerMinor':1 6.1 Build 7600 ()

[TerminalServer IsWinXPPlus IsWinVista IsWinVistaPlus

IsWinVistaEnterprise]

----------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm in somewhat the same boat: running under a clean install of Win7 64-bit:

After a "save" to C:\, there is no file visible.  Printing again, in the save dialog the previous saved PDF is visible, but not from Win Explorer.  Is the file being created with unusal permissions (my userid is the only one on the machine and is an Administrator)?

Work-around: if I save to a non-system disk (anything other than "C:"), or a location on C:\ like "My Documents", the PDF is created just fine.  Maybe this is a "permissions" issue, and PDFCreator is just not properly reporting the create/write error?

Update: it appearsthat under Win7, the C:\ root folder is protected under the default security setup.  Other programs besides PDFCreator fail when trying to save to C:\, so its not a problem with this program.  I do wish PDFCreator would issue some type of error message when this occurs...

Hi, I'm new. I used the software, but I had the same problem when upgrading to windows 7. I uninstalled it and re-installed it and rebooted in between but nothing happens when I try to print from the web. I've tried what other people suggested. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Thank you for posting those tips about windows 7.

First off... Why are you installing in the root directory? To install (or write) in the root directory requires elevated priviledges. No sane reasonable person would even consider it especially since the directory root contains limited file/directory entries (for example you could have thousands of files/directories under (for example: C:\Downloaded ) but the root directory (ie: C:\) can only have a limited number (I don't remember the exact number but I believe it is under 2048 or 1024 for NTFS - for FAT32 it is 512). Even other file systems have similar limitations.

1.) Dont upgrade from Vista to Windows 7. Even if Microsoft advertises this method all the time it will cause many troubles. I havent seen any case where this worked without problems. Especially from Windows XP to Vista is a catastrophy.

2.) PDFCreator works on Windows 7. 0.9.8 works on Windows 7 and I have done intensive testing with Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

3.) Saving documents to a system directory like "C:\", "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Windows" cant be done with enabled UAC in Windows Vista/Windows 7 without an UAC prompt. The reason for this is that these are protected locations that should only be accessed by the system or an installer with an UAC prompt. This is not a bug of PDFCreator. This is part of the new security concept of Microsoft that Administrator rights are only used to install software, but not for daily work.

If you want the security setting of Windows XP you can disable UAC, but then every software can fill the registry or Windows directory with tons of useless data making your PC slower and causing problems.

4.) FAT16 only supported 512 entries in the root directory, but on FAT32 or NTFS there is no such limit, but you should also make subdirectories on your system drive. The system partition should be used for small files and should be stored in your user profile. Larger files should be stored on a data partition. I prefer the 2-1 rule. I have got 2 system partitions (for WinXP minimum 30GB, for Vista/7 minimum 50GB) and the rest of the disk is the data partition.

I also had been having problems with PDFCreator (0.9.8) and Windows 7 64-bit.  I just now found a solution to my problem; I don't know whether this is the same problem everyone else has, but I hope this helps...  First, how I found the problem; second (you can jump there if you're impatient) the solution.

Situation: fresh install of Windows 7, fresh install of PDFCreator.  Worked for the first few days; after that, I would print to PDFCreator and nothing would happen - no prompt for title/filename, nothing.  The print queue showed the job ("Error printing") but no useful information.  I could start PDFCreator manually, but my jobs didn't start up.  I uninstalled PDFCreator, rebooted, re-installed, and it worked again - for about a day; then the same thing.

I thought at first that Ghostscript was missing or damaged, but I printed a test page from inside of PDFCreator (rather than from the Printer Properties page) and it worked just fine.  So I looked a little deeper - I went to the Ports page; the port is "PDFCreator:"; so far so good.  I clicked "Configure Port", and found that the line "Redirect this port to the following program:" was set to (as near as I can remember; I didn't write it down) "C:\PROGRA~1\PDFCRE~1\PDFSPOOL.EXE" - in other words, the mangled short-filename version.  Which would be OK, except that I'm using 64-bit Windows and PDFCreator is 32-bit, so it's located in "\Program Files (x86)" - and the mangled version looked like it probably pointed to just plain "Program Files".  I clicked Browse, and sure enough it started in the Windows folder, which is what usually happens when the expected path doesn't exist.  I browsed to the correct path and clicked Open... and got the "An error occurred during port configuration.  Operation could not be completed" message.  Aha, says I, that's UAC.  So how can I modify printer properties as an administrator?  Maybe there's a clever way, but I don't know it; what I found was the following:

Solution:

• Open a command prompt as an administrator.
• Temporarily activate the hidden Administrator account by typing net user administrator /active:yes
• Leave the command prompt open - we'll be right back.
• Switch User and log in as Administrator (account has no password by default)
• Start/Devices and Printers
• Right-click on PDFCreator, select Printer Properties
• Go to the Ports page, roll down to "PDFCreator:", click Configure Port
• Click Browse, navigate to the PDFCreator folder, select PDFSpool.exe and click Open.  (If it was already selected when you got to this point, then this was not the cause of your problem and I apologize for wasting your time.)
• Click OK
• If you had any jobs sitting in the queue, PDFCreator should start processing them immediately.
• Close everything and log off as Administrator.
• Back in your normal-user session, disable the Administrator account again (it's disabled for your security, not just for inconvenience): net user administrator /active:yes
• And you're done.

1.) So this is not a Windows 7 problem, but more a 64 Bit problem that can occur in Windows Vista too (and theoretically in XP-64 too).

2.) Why not simply deactivating UAC? This should be the easier way than activating a new user account that will create a new user profile.

3.) The properties of other printers can be modified. It seems that this does not work because it is non Microsoft Code.

Just curious if anyone has found a solution for the Error 481 Michael mentioned above? I am running into the same issue.

>>1.) So this is not a Windows 7 problem, but more a 64 Bit problem that can occur in Windows Vista too (and theoretically in XP-64 too).

Possibly.  I never used XP 64-bit; I did have Vista 64-bit, but found UAC so crippling that I turned it off.  In general I think that UAC, and the principle of least-privilege, is a very Good Thing; it's just that in Vista it sucked very badly.  It's much more granular, and generally better thought-out, under 7; still, though, there are situations like this, where you need to run a Control Panel item as administrator but there's no way to right-click anything and select "Run as administrator"; hence the workaround I posted.

In any case, as far as I can tell, the problem is that the installer for PDFCreator generated the path to PDFSpool.exe using the mangled short filenames rather than long filenames - this is probably done for backwards compatibility with older versions of Windows that don't support long filenames, but I don't know.  I also don't know how or why it worked for the first day or so.  The problem is that "C:\PROGRA~1\" is ambiguous: it could mean "C:\Program Files\" or it could mean "C:\Program Files (x64)\", and apparently it reverted to pointing to the shorter option.  This is rank speculation on my part, of course: I haven't seen the installer code...

>> 2.) Why not simply deactivating UAC?

If you meant temporarily deactivating UAC... that requires two reboots (disable UAC, reboot; do your thing; re-enable UAC, reboot; go back to work); this method requires none - you don't even have to log out your session.

If you meant "why not disable UAC permanently"... well, yes you can do that, but it's not a great idea, security-wise.  The point of UAC is to limit the amount of damage that malware (or dumb users) can do; running as an administrator all the time is like taking the blade guard off your tablesaw - convenient, but not recommended.  It's just that Microsoft is a few decades late in embracing this philosophy, and we've all developed the habit of running as administrator all the time (and writing software that won't run any other way.)  Microsoft's first stab at doing things the right way - Vista - was a horrifying mess, and 7 is not perfect; still, the sooner we all get into good habits the safer we'll be in general.

>> This should be the easier way than activating a new user account that will create a new user profile.

We're not creating a new user.  "Administrator" and "Guest" are created when Windows is installed; they're just disabled by default.  You could also do this by creating a new administrative user, but this way is faster, easier, and (I think) cleaner.  Still a hack, but not such a nasty hack.

>> 3.) The properties of other printers can be modified. It seems that this does not work because it is non Microsoft Code.

Not true.  You can modify the properties of the PDFCreator printer as well (go ahead, try it!) - just not the properties of the "PDFCreator:" port monitor.  As far as I can tell, that's because the installer that created it was running as an administrator; whatever is created by an administrator can only be modified by an administrator.

I have the same problem I can see the job in the spooler but doesn't save it as the pdf file, and the temp folder is empty.

Uninstalling and reinstaling with or without the reboot doesn't help.Printer driver has the correct patch C:\Program Files (x86)\PDFCreator....

What I did was:

I restored installed and activated only win7-64 from the image, and PDFCreator was working fine after installing it.

Then I restored the same system with the drivers installed only (graphic card, scanner, printer etc) and the PDF Creator did not work after installation.

I wonder, is this a problem with PDF installed after the printer drivers (64bit epson vs. 32bit PDF) or because some of the windows futures was removed (Fax and Scanner, XPS, Internet Printing) and then PDF was installed.

OK I solved the problem. Path to the temp folder in enviromental variables for user was wrong I made the typo in (%SystemRoot%\Temp). Works fine now.

>>1.) Possibly.  I never used XP 64-bit; I did have Vista 64-bit, but found UAC so crippling that I turned it off.  In general I think that UAC, and the principle of least-privilege, is a very Good Thing; it's just that in Vista it sucked very badly.  It's much more granular, and generally better thought-out, under 7; still, though, there are situations like this, where you need to run a Control Panel item as administrator but there's no way to right-click anything and select "Run as administrator"; hence the workaround I posted.

The path "C:\Program Files (x86)" also existed in Win XP-64.

I also turned off UAC in Vista. I tried it, but it didnt work. Now on Windows 7 I have turned it on and there are nearly no problem.

Every setting from Microsoft should not need a UAC prompt in Windows 7 with default setting. This was an optimization because otherwise it would be too annoying for most users. Every code that is not generated my Microsoft should throw an UAC prompt if it needs Administrator rights. At least this is the official solution of Microsoft. The "run as administrator" is only for some actions where you need Administrator rights without an Installer like some actions on the command line.

>>1 1/2) The problem is that "C:\PROGRA~1\" is ambiguous: it could mean "C:\Program Files\" or it could mean "C:\Program Files (x64)\", and apparently it reverted to pointing to the shorter option.

C:\Progra~1 points to only one direction. In my case it is C:\Program Files (and I bet for everybody else too), but DOS names should never be generated by simple shortening the long name auf the directory because it depends on the order in which the directories are created which comes first. In many cases there are more than one "C:\Progra~" dir. In XP I had one "C:\Programme" which is the official dir, then there was a "C:\Program Files" for installers that ignored the fact, that I have a German system. Then there was a dir "C:\Program Data", there was a dir "C:\prog" for my own programs. There was also a dir with the name "C:\Progra~1", so if there is a problem with the abbriviation we would see it more often.

Also I think there is no need to install PDFCreator in "C:\Program Files". I think you can put it elsewhere.

>>2.) If you meant temporarily deactivating UAC... that requires two reboots (disable UAC, reboot; do your thing; re-enable UAC, reboot; go back to work); this method requires none - you don't even have to log out your session.

I do not like the user switching on desktop machines. This causes more troubles than you save time, if some settings are changed while a program is running on the other user.

Rebooting should be not such a great problem. You only need one reboot now. The second reboot can be next evening if you go home.

>>3.) If you meant "why not disable UAC permanently"... well, yes you can do that, but it's not a great idea, security-wise.  The point of UAC is to limit the amount of damage that malware (or dumb users) can do; running as an administrator all the time is like taking the blade guard off your tablesaw - convenient, but not recommended.  It's just that Microsoft is a few decades late in embracing this philosophy, and we've all developed the habit of running as administrator all the time (and writing software that won't run any other way.)  Microsoft's first stab at doing things the right way - Vista - was a horrifying mess, and 7 is not perfect; still, the sooner we all get into good habits the safer we'll be in general.

I dont meant permanently. UAC is annoying, but it is very useful. The system also stays cleaner and faster if not every stupid application fills the registry with garbage.

>>4.) We're not creating a new user.  "Administrator" and "Guest" are created when Windows is installed; they're just disabled by default.  You could also do this by creating a new administrative user, but this way is faster, easier, and (I think) cleaner.  Still a hack, but not such a nasty hack.

They are there, but the profile does not exist. If you have modified the default user on your machine with some settings and bigger amounts of data, a new profile is created. This data needs storage and has to be copied by the backup script every time. Also initializing the new profile takes as long a the one restart needed and if you forget to turn it off again you have the security hole number one: An Administator user without password with the default name.

Your procedure will not work with a new Administrator user, because they will also be UAC protected. What would be the difference between the new Administrator user and my Administrator user that  I am using now. If you ask me it is a bug that the official "Administrator" is not protected by the UAC.

>>5.) Not true.  You can modify the properties of the PDFCreator printer as well (go ahead, try it!) - just not the properties of the "PDFCreator:" port monitor.  As far as I can tell, that's because the installer that created it was running as an administrator; whatever is created by an administrator can only be modified by an administrator.

It does not matter who created the settings, but it does matter where they are created. If the settings are in the user profile, of the registry in HKCU, then also a Standard user has full access. You can even install software, as long as you stay in your user profile. Google Chrome is a case of a per user installation.

If the settings are in the All Users directory, "C:\Program Files", "C:\Windows" or the registry in HKLM then you only have read access as standard user. Access to the file system will fail with a security exception, but accessing the registry will not. With UAC control the system fakes the access and does not throw an exception. If you want to change something in Vista/7, click save and if you open it again it is not there any more, than this could be a reason.

Even if it would be important who created the setting there would be no way to tell if you created the files as Administrator or Standard user. If you click on "Start as Administrator" your User is still your user. It only has administrator priviledges. Your username, all environment variables etc. stay the same. In NTFS the creator of a file is only identified by his user ID and this user ID will be the same for you and you elevated as administrator. You can also not set 2 access rights for you at the same time.

Hi evertybody,
Thanks for your support but let me tell you that I tried all the solutions you posted and I'm still having error 481 :-(
The only procedure that is working for me is:
- Clicking on "Exit Program" in the error message windows; and then
- Run PDFCreator.
Regards,
Gustavo

I use Win7 Prof 64 German version, installed freshly over a preinstalled XP Prof 32 without even trying to migrate.

Just installed the pdf-creator after having read the entire thread. Forewarned, in the installation procedure I changed the standard installation path to C;\Programme (which is really C.\programme and not C:\program files).

Thus, I have (so far) none of the problems described here. The printer is working fine. Lets see whether it works tomorrow (after a reboot). I will make a note here - if not, you will know it worked.

cy dy

<This thread provides a solution to the 481 Invalid Picture problem.>  [No It Didn't :-( ]

It has to do with permissions on the Windows\Temp directory

Well it didn't work the second time I tried it!

I've had no success on 32-bit Win 7.  This was a clean install of PDFCreator, not an upgrade. 

When I first installed PDFCreator I got the 481 Invalid picture error.  I changed the Windows\Temp permissions (see earlier post today by me) and the 481 error went away.

Now, nothing appears to happen when I try and print an IE page.  If I go to the "Devices and Printers" page and then right-click "See what's printing", there is nothing in the print spool.

I had not rebooted.  Read this thread and rebooted.  Problem is still the same.

Any ideas?  Any thing to check?

Update: I uninstalled and reinstalled with "Run as administrator".  Now I get the 481 error, even though the Windows\Temp permissions were changed.  Needless to say nothing is being printed.

TIA

I ran into the same problem with my wife's computer (32bit Win 7).  I changed the compatibilty settings for the PDF Creator exe file and the PDF spool exe file. In the advanced settings for all users I checked off - run this program as an administrator - and the error code 481 does not pop up.  Hopefully this will work for you

Thanks for the tip about the Compatibility mode. I changed those two executables' properties (right-click on the executables from windows explorer) first to "Run as Administrator" and then to XP Service Pack 3 compatibility.  I did it for all users as well.

In both cases I did NOT get the 481 error.  However, I still didn't get any print output.  The print spool didn't have any jobs waiting either.

Hi gbgolfer,
When you get no print out, try to run PDFCreator. 

I am having similar problems.  I have a brand new lap top running Win 7 Ultimate (64 bit) so I am not upgrading a machine that it worked on before.  I downloaded and installed PDF creator.  Seems to install without a problem but when I try to print, nothing happens.  I don't get the box with the option to save, email, wait and collect etc.  If I try to launch the PDF creator program from the start menu, nothing happens. 

I've uninstalled, rebooted and reinstalled 3 times now and still not getting it to work at all.

Love the progam and used it frequently but disappointed that it does not seem to work with a 64 bit OS.

All these problems with Windows 7 are very strange, because I have tested it on my Windows 7 x64 Ultimate and installed about 10 times in different versions between 0.9.8 and 0.9.9 and did not find any of these problems.

Does the PDFCreator.exe start, if you go to C:\Program Files(x86)\PDFCreator\PDFCreator.exe

andr_gin,

Your suggestion was a good one.  It will lead to the eventual answer.

When I ran PDFCreator.exe directly I got a warning message from User Account Control - "Do you want to allow the following program from an unknown publisher to make changes to this program?"

Program name: PDFCreator.exe

Publisher: unknown

When I clicked OK, PDFCreator started and it showed all the previous print jobs.

<This thread provides some background on what is happening with User Account Control> and implies that PDFCreator might need to be digitally signed to resolve things.

I'm not knowledgeable enough with Win 7 to know what other steps I can take to resolve this.

1.) There are two ways how you get an UAC prompt:

a) It is an .exe that is identified as an installer

b) The program requests Administrator rights itself by calling ShellExecuteEx

c) You click on "Start as Administrator"

PDFCreator.exe is no installer and does not require Administrator rights, only for some features like creating new printers or starting a modified PDFCreator.exe for the first time (because it is an ActiveX exe, that needs to be registered in HKLM)

PDFCreator.exe also does not call ShellExecuteEx to show an UAC prompt

The only way you see an UAC prompt is, if you click  on "Start as Administrator" manually and then it does not depend which Publisher is set.

2.) PDFCreator is built as followed:

a) User Application => Postscript print driver

b) Postscript print driver => Redmon Redirection Port

c) Redmon Redirection Port => PDFSpool.exe

c) PDFSpool.exe => PDFCreator.exe

d) PDFCreator.exe => Ghostscript

The printer is shown, so it is not a problem in a)

Redmon is installed, so this works too

The print job disappears from the Queue, so PDFSpool.exe accepted it

PDFCreator did not start, so here is the problem

Ghostscript is not being called any more

If you start PDFCreator manually, then all instances of PDFSpool.exe could send their jobs, so here something went wrong.

andr_gi,

Thanks for the reply.

You indicate that the only way I can get the UAC prompt is if I click on Start as Administrator manually.  That is not the case with me.  I simply double-click on PDFCreator.exe and I get the message.

I looked at the PDFCreator.exe Properties, under the Compatibility tab, and "Run this program as an administrator" is not checked.  However, I noticed that I had checked "Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3)".  Unchecking that allowed PDFCreator.exe to run without gettting the UAC prompt.

Now I am back to my original problem - when I try and print a web page from IE8 I get the PDFCreator error 481 (Invalid Picture); Modul: modMain; Procedure: StartProgram; Line: 51700.

On a hunch I tried to print a document from Notepad.  This worked perfectly!

It appears that the problem lies in the interaction between IE8 and PDFCreator.

I have no explanation, but PDFCreator is now working from IE8.

As far as I can remember I have done nothing, not even a reboot, since it last failed.

Absolutely bizarre!

1.) If you set PDFCreator to compatibility mode for a Windows without UAC it is the same as "Start as Administrator".

I dont think that this will help, because PDFCreator runs on Windows 7 without compatibility mode. I have tested it on my computer, but I havent tried printing from IE8 yet. Did you click File => Print or did you use the PDFCreator toolbar?

2.) This line displays the PDFCreator main window:

51700  Load frmMain

It is only the displaying, so I think there is a user control that does not work.

andr_gin,

I do not have the PDFCreator toolbar installed.  I use Ctrl+P (File -> Print equivalent) to print.

I noticed that an earlier poster reported the same error at line 51720.  Browsing the forum indicates the same problem with Vista.

1.) Strg + P works for me in Win 7 x64 Ultimate with IE8.

2.) Was the second error also in ModMain? In version 0.9.9 the last line is 51700, but every functions starts at 50000

Regarding the version number, I have no idea.

I got the line number information from the Tue, 11/17/2009 - 03:47 post in this thread.

The Vista references were from a google search.

(Recalling my Unix days I'm certain that this will turn out to be some sort of "permissions" problem.  However, I have almost no Vista or Win 7 experience, so I'm not much help :-)

In thinking back about what happened between my system not working and suddenly working I won't rule out the slight possibility that I rebooted.

I'm on Windows 7 with UAC off and have no issues printing from IE8 or any other app with version .0.9.7 and .0.9.9.

I've found the uninstall, reboot and re-install to be helpful with some of the early Vista/W7 comatible verion(s). Also perhaps run the installer as Administrator.

If the issues is IE8 only, try running in safe mode to disable the PDForge add-on or other potential BHO issue.

Tools -> Internet Options -> Programs -> Manage Add-ons in IE

or

Start -> All Progs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> IE (No Add-ons)

or 

iexplore.exe  -extoff

Hi,

I have the same problem. I have been using for years with XP. I did a clean install to W7 Ultimate. First I noticed map pages not loading for Outlook. Then maps would only print the header and footer of the Web page. Then I looked at the preview and only the header and footer would show up, even if I tried to use a different printer than PDFCreator 9.8.

So I uninstalled PDFCreator 9.8. Restarted computer and everything worked normally. I then reinstalled PDFCreator 0.9.9, thinking there was a fix.

Now the map pages come up, but they still won't print correctly or let any of my other printers print the whole document/web page. It won't let me print any web pages with any printer correctly. And I still get an error.

Let me know if you need more information. And thanks very much for all your past work! I use this program daily.

Thanks, Duane

Response to:

<3.) Saving documents to a system directory like "C:\", "C:\Program Files" or "C:\Windows" cant be done with enabled UAC in Windows Vista/Windows 7 without an UAC prompt>

Then it is a problem with pdf creator, because it either shouldn't default to install in C:\Program Files, or it should learn to play nicely with Windows 7 like other programs that once installed don't ask for permission.

<Thanks for the tip about the Compatibility mode. I changed those two executables' properties (right-click on the executables from windows explorer) first to "Run as Administrator" and then to XP Service Pack 3 compatibility.>

I tried that with no change

I did some more experimenting with different things that seemed to work for others.

W7 Ultimate, Clean Install

The only time I had a problem was printing from the Web.

To reiterate, it caused all my printers to only print Web page header & footer.

I regained that by removing pdfforge toolbar.

Then pdf only spooled to list. I didn't realize they were there until looking after reading a post. Thanks!

Now I am only getting an error (still with no pdf popping up to ask were to save and name it)

Error-Nr:481 (Invalid picture)

Procedure:         StartProgram

Line:     51700

I went to UAC and totally disabled it.(suggestion above)

Everything works fine.

I re-enabled it and set permissions to full control.

It still would not work.

I don't want to run with UAC off so I will try FreePDF for now.

Hope this helps, Duane

Hi Duane,

can you tell me when this happens? Did this happen when you print with Internet Explorer or with notepad?

I'm a new PDFCreator user (Windows 7 Ultimate-64bit on a new machine) and am having similar problems. When I first installed, it worked fine. Tried to use it again yesterday, and I could see it spooling in the Printer window, but nothing happened after that--no window to ask where to store it, etc. I am trying to 'print' a pdf from Word 2003.

Now when I try to launch PDFCreator, it won't even launch (0.9.0.9) from the desktop shortcut or the actual file. I have not uninstalled, rebooted or reinstalled based on this thread's comments as to the futility of that.

Has anyone found a solution that works?

Thanks.

 Hi everybody, I'm a PDFCreator user for years, on diverse windows operating systems. It always performed great, with all kinds of graphical programs that I use. 

A few weeks ago I changed my standard Windows laptop for a MacBook together with VMWare. I run a Windows 7 Professional 64 bit machine for one application that's only available for Windows. I produce all reports in PDF format with PDFCreator.

Geuss what? I ran into the same problems as the above. I used it for 2 weeks, no problem. One or two times error 481, invalid image. Today it just doesn't work anymore. I deinstalled PDFCreator, removed remaining files, rebooted and installed latest version. 1 or 2 prints worked ok, after that same error or no action at all.

I checked the posts here, checked spool settings and temp variable. No problem there.

It's not the application that I use, same happens when using other applications.

I'm very interested in a solution too.

Thank you! 

>481, invalid image

This error is solved. It happens if UAC is enabled and you print with the IE. If you start an application after the IE and print than with PDFCreator the error doesn't appear.

That may solve the error 481 (although I didn't understand the solution), but i've never used IE at all, only firefox and never with PDFCreator. I only use Word 2003 on Windows 7 64. Autosave is NOT on. I just get nothing after a few prints.

Am also experiencing trouble getting fonts to be embedded in the pdf, and trouble getting a custom paper size except if I print EPS, which causes other issues with fonts.

Frank,

I'm not sure "solved" is the correct term.  You might have a "workaround," but the problem still remains.

I am curious if the problem with IE and PDFCreator can consistently be reproduced and worked around?  If so, that indicates that you've narrowed down the problem.

I'm also curious if other virtual printers, like FreePDF, exhibit the same problem?  If they do, then the problem lies with IE.  If not, then possibly the problem is with PDFCreator.

Hi all,

for:  the error code 481

I solved by disabling automatic update check of the program.

With this always print OK, with orwithout IE started.

Matteo

________

The force be with you.....always!!

Thanks to ALL !!!! I had the same problem I just took it slowly, Unistalled it first, Restarted, Run OneClick Tupe up utilities, then restarted, and then I Installed without the toolbar, and after finishing, I closed everithing, restarted once more, and It works againg like Magic !!!

Gracias !!!!! :)