PDF Creator: Blank PDF's being created

PDFCreator PDFCreator English
1

Hello Everyone

I apologize in advance; this problem is rather strange and long winded, and possibly not even fixable.
I have a client using a software called “Softrader” that it’s self needs to use and comes bundled with PDFcreator 1.7.3 (this version is required for Softrader to work; versions upwards will not do the job).
The client, when using making PDF’s using Softrader, the PDF’s are coming out as blank 4kb sized files. The software devs working on it are completely stumped have no idea what is going on.

To get more info please look at the computer spec below.
Windows 8.1 Pro
Intel Core I5-3550
8GB RAM
intel HD Graphics ver: 10.18.10.4276
AVG AntiVirus

Before this problem started Nuance PDF viewer was installed along with Paper port (since put back on for troubleshooting), Nuance was clogging the hard drive with very large 10GB windows font files in the C:/Windows/Temp/Nuance directory which were all cleaned out and nuance PDF viewer and paper port uninstalled. This is where the problems with PDFcreator first started.
Since cleaning out the computer of Nuance PDF Viewer, Paperport and all the Windows temp files using CCleaner, PDFCreator has stopped working and is making blank PDF’s.

If anyone has any suggestions I will happily take them. There are no backups of the computer, we have completely uninstalled and reinstalled pdfcreator along with Softrader.

Thanks for reading
Sam Hockley

2

Update:

Managed to get a log file from when making a PDF throgh the Softrader program.

17/11/2016 13:24:16: PDFCreator Program Start
17/11/2016 13:24:16: Windowsversion: Windows 8 [6.2 Build 9200]
17/11/2016 13:24:16: InstalledAsServer: False
17/11/2016 13:24:16: MyAppData: C:\Users\nick.willetts\AppData\Roaming
17/11/2016 13:24:16: PDFCreator spool directory (Write access: true): C:\Users\NICK~1.WIL\AppData\Local\Temp\PDFCreator\Spool
17/11/2016 13:24:17: Autosavemodus: 1files
17/11/2016 13:24:17: Autosavemodus: Create File ‘C:\USERS\NICK.WILLETTS\DESKTOP\QUOTAT_A52502_BSS.pdf’
17/11/2016 13:24:17: Ghostscriptparameter:
-IC:\Program Files (x86)\PDFCreator\GS9.10\gs9.10\Lib
-q
-dNOPAUSE
-dBATCH
-sFONTPATH=C:\WINDOWS\Fonts
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite
-dPDFSETTINGS=/default
-dCompatibilityLevel=1.4
-dProcessColorModel=/DeviceCMYK
-dAutoRotatePages=/PageByPage
-dCompressPages=true
-dEmbedAllFonts=true
-dSubsetFonts=true
-dMaxSubsetPct=100
-dConvertCMYKImagesToRGB=false
-sOutputFile=C:\USERS\NICK.WILLETTS\DESKTOP\QUOTAT_A52502_BSS.pdf
-dEncodeColorImages=true
-dAutoFilterColorImages=true
-dEncodeGrayImages=true
-dAutoFilterGrayImages=true
-dEncodeMonoImages=true
-dMonoImageFilter=/CCITTFaxEncode
-dDownsampleMonoImages=false
-dPreserveOverprintSettings=true
-dUCRandBGInfo=/Preserve
-dUseFlateCompression=true
-dParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo=true
-dParseDSCComments=true
-dOPM=0
-dOffOptimizations=0
-dLockDistillerParams=false
-dGrayImageDepth=-1
-dASCII85EncodePages=false
-dDefaultRenderingIntent=/Default
-dTransferFunctionInfo=/Preserve
-dPreserveHalftoneInfo=false
-dDetectBlends=true
-f
C:\Users\NICK~1.WIL\AppData\Local\Temp\PDFCreator\Spool\58A81813379E4F1E9E6B480EA49E5DDF.mtd
17/11/2016 13:24:17: Time for converting [PDF without encryption]: 00:00:00:056
17/11/2016 13:24:17: Autosavemodus: Create File ‘C:\USERS\NICK.WILLETTS\DESKTOP\QUOTAT_A52502_BSS.pdf’ success

Regards
Sam Hockley

3

Solved.

There were no security permissions on the C:\Users\NICK~1.WIL\AppData\Local\Temp\PDFCreator\Spool\ folder. Very strange that the software saw this as “True” and still made the PDF’s, but after we added proper permissions to it fixed the problem.

Regards
Sam Hockley

4

Hi Sam,

it is possible that the SYSTEM account under which the spooler is executed was still able to write the files there, but the user account running PDFCreator (and therefore Ghostscript) didn’t have permissions to read them, not sure how a flder with “no” permissions is handled by the system account or how the existance of a folder with no permissions is possible. Then again the PDFCreator version is several years old and it also might be a bug.

Best regards

Robin