'Crw32.exe needs to close' error. Faulting Module Mod:pscript5.dll

Question

We are using Crystal Reports 9 and have been for quite some time now.  A couple of weeks ago we had two users complaining of the same issue.  Sometimes when they want to print to PDF, Crystal will start to print, but it will not load past page 1.  The error "crw32.exe needs to close" comes up with the faulting module Mod:pscript5.dll. After the program closes, the portion of the document that made it to the printer pops up in Adobe Acrobat. It's usually just the first few lines of the first page. This happens sometimes. Sometimes the document will print the whole way through, other times it won't. It does it on multiple documents as well. We first noticed it when printing larger documents(50pages or so), but it will also do it on a 1 or 2 page document. I've uninstalled and reinstalled Crystal and Adobe Acrobat with no success. I downloaded the service pack for Crystal, changed printer drivers, added Crystal Reports to the DEP exceptions list, and tried printing to Adobe Reader, but none of it worked. I've also monitored the memory while Crystal is running and trying to print the report, but there weren't any significant jumps in memory usage. I know that pscript.dll is a post script printing file, but I kind of think that it isn't a printing issue and it's throwing up the wrong error. It errors with more than one printer. And it will work some of the time. It seems to be hit and miss. Has anyone run into this issue or have any other suggestions?

Answer 1

Good info, now we know for sure.
CR 9 used one set of routines to format the reports, back then we were PRE-WYSIWYG, meaning we did not use Adobes formatting technique's when viewing and printing. In CR 10 and above we moved to their model which is why newly created Reports render and work properly.
Only thing I can suggest is if you must use that printer driver to update your reports, Open each one, Verify database, set up page size to the PDF printer and then save as to a new location. YOu can try checking off the no Printer option and Dissociate... to see if that helps.
So yes in one sense it is a CR issue but at the same time CR 9 worked fine with the current Printers and PDF viewers at the time.
CR 9 has been out of support for years now and we do recommend that you update your reports each version, the further apart the version numbers of the RPT's are the more chance that some functionality may have issues when opened in a new version.
No new patches are available so nothing we can do, possibly Adobe can make their Print Driver more backward compatible....
Thanks
Don