Illustrator CS3 - problems saving as pdf (or pdf-compatible)

Hi,
My office are trialling Illustrator CS3 as we're getting some business card type work and we'd like to be able to send the proposed designs to the client as a multi-page PDF.
Unfortunately, I'm having a terrible problem when saving a particular file i) as .ai format, if PDF compatibility is checked, &
ii) as a PDF.
In both cases the progress bar goes half way and then Illustrator hangs, eventually saving after 3 hours, at the last try!
The multi-page document consists of 7 x A4 tiles, I know this sounds big but actually there's not that much stuff in it: on each page there's a bit of text, a gradient, 3 monochrome logos and two drop-shadows. There is also a spot colour and a linked image (500kb). If/when it eventually saves the pdf is <150kb and the .ai is <2mb.
I've tested various options when saving to try to trace the problem and it ONLY hangs when PDFing is involved; it saves with compression really fast.
Obviously the time it's taking isn't practical so I'm hoping someone can suggest what might be wrong. The PC is a decent spec: WINXP sp2 / 3GHz P4 / 1mb ram / 256mb gfx / 1.5Gb swapfile / 5gb defragged space on HD. I've looked at the Windows Task Manager as Illustrator is trying to save - the CPU is only up to 50% and the swapfile usage is 300mb - if it's taking so long why isn't it maxed out?
Hope someone can help, thanks in advance.
smithy_ss

I can't save a 1.4 meg .ai file as .pdf. Program freezes.

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>
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>

Illustrator CS3 - problems saving as pdf (or pdf-compatible)

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