Exception Error

Hello after installing the latest Windows 7 updates multiple users are receiving an Exception Error. Please see the error below. I will post the offending Windows update KB when I have the answer. Also the PDF is still created. It just throws an error afterwards.

Hi,

updating to a recent version could potentially fix the issue, the version you are using is several years old.
http://www.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/download

Best regards

Robin

Hi Robin,

I would love to update to the newest version but our AV RTS flags the newest version as grayware.

Here are the details: PUA_WebCompanion

Hopefully you can fix this in a later version.

Thanks,

Mike

Hi Mike,

the free version does contain an offer screen for WebCompanion, but it is just an optional offer during the setup and won’t get installed without consent. You can check the setup on virustotal.com, where you can see that only a very small percentage of security products have an issue with the file. PDFCreator 2.2.2 also contains the optional offer screen, so it seems to be a pretty random detection.
Alternatively, PDFCreator Business doesn’t contain any offer screen and has far less issues with causing false security alerts. We are also trying to get rid of any false alerts for the freeware, but especially PUA are hard to get rid of, as there is no proper definition for potentially unwanted applications and even displaying a single ad during the setup can be potentially unwanted.

Best regards

Robin

Hi,

it seems this is a major issue related to one of the latet updates.
Our error reporting tool has reported 0 of these errors before May 6th and currently is receiving several reports on this per minute. On first sight, it seems only Win7-8.1 is affected, but all PDFCreator versions are, so most likely it is connected to the update of the .NET framework.
Will let you know as soon as we find out more.

Best regards

Robin

Hello Robin,

Any progress on this issue and has a sollution been found ?

Richard.

Hi,

I am afraid we haven't been able to reproduce this here, the update alone isn't enough to trigger the error.
Are you getting this error, too? If yes, are you using PDFCreator in connection with remote desktops?
Do you get the error every time you close PDFCreator, or only some of the time?

Best regards

Robin

It currently seems this is cause by a bug in the WeakEventListener which is part of the .NET framework, we will implement a work around for this issue with the next PDFCreator update and prevent it from creating error reports, but only Microsoft can fix the actual bug in the WeakEventListener.

Hi Robin,

A quick reply. We use PDFcreator on Windows 7 pc's. Nothing with remote desktops.or things like that. As far as i can see we get this error everytime we use PDFCreator on those systems that are updated with the latest patches. We follow m$ updates rather stringently. I read your mesage that a solution/fix is on the way so i'll wait for that and see if that fixes it.

Richard.

Hi Richard,

we are pretty certain to have isolated and worked around the issue,
would you like to test our new version to ensure it actually fixes it?
If anybody else is getting this error and would like to test the fixed update, please let us know.

Best regards

Robin

Hello Robin,

Tested the 3.2.2 version and the problem is gone. Tested on two systems so far and none of them is showing the prioblem anymore.

Richard.

1 Like

Hi Robin,

I just tried downloaded the new version 3.2.2 and again our firewall are blocking it as malware. Here is the info if it helps.

image

Disposition: Malware
Threat name: PUA.Win.Trojan.Webcompanion::75.sbx.vioc

Hi,

the free version does contain an offer for a third party software and WebCompanion is one of the potentially advertised products. The lsop.exe is the component which loads the offer screen, if only this was blocked, PDFCreator will still have installed correctly. Since it does display an advertising screen some firewall/anti-virus products might classify it as potentially unwanted application and there isn't anything we can do about it (despite from not displaying any ads during the install). Throwing PUA, Trojan and Malware into a single detection message is really careless and incorrect reporting by the firewall product, 3 different things of which trojan would actually be a real security threat. All uploads to our servers are carefully monitored and all our computers run up to date anti-virus software.

Best regards

Robin

Download the latest free version then upload the file to www virustotal com/#/home/upload
This is messy and needs to be fixed. Both our Sophos and Cisco AMP flag this infected and unwanted!

Cisco AMP for Endpoints found a total of 1 events matching your subscription named End User Protect Alert since 2018-07-05 16:05:46 UTC.
1.
o Event Type: Threat Detected
o Detection: PUA.Win.Trojan.Webcompanion::75.sbx.vioc
o File: lsop.exe
o File path: \?\C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\Temp\is-SI81N.tmp\lsop.exe
o Detection SHA-256: 287ffd80eef3240b32a301691bd52bbebe0bdaef58e740fc8a9b6a8c089a0052
o By Application: PDFCreator-3_2_2-Setup.tmp
o Application SHA-256: cc783a04ccbca4edd06564f8ec88fe5a15f1e3bb26cec7de5e090313520d98f3
o Timestamp: 2018-07-05 16:12:06 +0000 UTC

https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/3c29b5810b2008c8501c0c4485780b1e85aa011c88cc7f3844283b81ef6e2c8c/detection
3 out of 69 detect a PUA (potentially unwanted application) with our installer. It does contain an offer screen for a third party offer screen which has a 100% optional offer. If a vendor decides to classify this behavior as potentially unwanted, it is their decision. If they then don't clearly name the detection and just throw "Trojan" into it when there clearly isn't any, they are preventing their users from installing perfectly safe software.
http://docs.pdfforge.org/pdfcreator/3.2/en/pdfcreator/frequently-asked-questions/anti-virus-program-false-alert/

Hi Robin,

It probably is a false positive but this is hurting your product. Everyone in our company used to use (500+ people) and we no longer do. I understand where you are coming from but in my opinion removing the PUA would help your product grow. Just throwing my thoughts out there.

Hi all.

I tried today to install PDF Creator (v.3.2.2).
When it finished installed I received an error.

|Problem Event Name:|CLR20r3|
|---|---|
|  Problem Signature 01:|PDFCreator.exe|
|  Problem Signature 02:|3.2.2.13517|
|  Problem Signature 03:|5b2bc1d9|
|  Problem Signature 04:|PDFCreator.EditionBase|
|  Problem Signature 05:|3.2.2.13517|
|  Problem Signature 06:|5b2bc1d8|
|  Problem Signature 07:|2e|
|  Problem Signature 08:|8|
|  Problem Signature 09:|System.IO.FileLoadException|
|  OS Version:|6.1.7601.2.1.0.768.3|
|  Locale ID:|1048|
|  Additional Information 1:|40cf|
|  Additional Information 2:|40cf079a96ef2995d5fbb3c34d123859|
|  Additional Information 3:|93aa|
|  Additional Information 4:|93aa6836135f24def3bf7b1b494d64a9|

What is happening?! I cannot use anymore PDF Creator!
Thanks

Hi,

sorry for the trouble.
Did you install it as update? As a first try to fix things, please try reinstalling PDFCreator.
After uninstalling, check if all files got deleted from your PDFCreator application folder and reboot your machine, then install again.
If the problem persists, please let us know and include the setuplog.txt from the PDFCreator folder.

Best regards

Robin

Thanks Robin.

I have checked the PDFCreator installing folder after the unninstalling process, and I found some dlls which are not deleted by uninstaller. Seems those dlls are stopping the new version installing correctly. I have deleted them manually, and after that the installing process was finalized correctly.

Thanks again for the solution.
(Sorry for may bad english :slight_smile: )

1 Like

Tried the 3.2.2 rendition and the issue is no more. Tried on two frameworks up until this point and none of them is demonstrating the issue any longer.