Intermittent ioerror printing to PDF using Acrobat -- "readstring"

Question

I posted this query before, but the term "Distiller" seems to have obscured my issue.
Far, far too often I get an error log like this, when trying to print to PDF from Photoshop Elements:
%%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%%
%%[ Error: ioerror; OffendingCommand: readstring ]%%
Stack:
ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿýûðÖ²U/
@kÉè÷ýþÿÿÿþþþþþþþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿþþþþþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿþÿþþÿþÿþÿÿþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿþþþþþþþþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ ÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿþþþþþþþÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿÿ...)
-file-
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%
TextText
I have simply tried Ctrl-P again to print to Adobe PDF, and maybe half the time it works, without any change in Photoshop image that I want converted to PDF. Sometimes, superstitiously, I reduce the res/file size and it goes through, but not always. The diagnostic tells me next to nothing, although I was a programmer for 20 years. There seems to be an Acrobat component named "Distiller," and "readstring" is failing for some reason that only one of the product programmers, or someone with similar knowledge, can understand, and the programmer does not tell me the user what to do about it.
What is the cause of the "ioerror"
The Acrobat product I am using is Acrobat 6.
I would know nothing about "opening a file in Distiller." The success and failures appear haphazard, but as a former professional programmer I know that there are deterministic reasons, even if nobody ever discovers them. Debugging programs is very hard work.
Perhaps someone can suggest a means of forwarding the error message to someone in Adobe programming, who already knows what the error message should mean to me, the user.

Answer 1

The details of the error are not familiar to me. However to explain where it comes from and a possible check on things I will try to explain the process.
There are basically 3 levels related to the Adobe PDF printer. The most fundamental is to print to file with the Adobe PDF printer. That process creates a PS file (may have a PRN extension). Then open the file in Distiller (part of the Acrobat sweet that converts PS and EPS files to PDF) and see if you get the same error, or it may possibly work.
The process you used to simply print to the printer depends on AcroTray running in the background. AcroTray automates the call to Distiller (that is the product showing the message you got). I am wondering in a way if the PS file somehow is getting corrupted - that is what corrupted files sort of look like in Distiller.
The last process available in several products is PDF Maker, basically a preprocessor for the Adobe PDF printer that adds PDF Marks to the file that are recognized by Distiller for adding links and such.
Don't know that this will help, but the first process may be worth trying just to see if it works, or if something else is in error. If you have a separate PS printer installed, you can also try printing to file with that and processing with Distiller. The problem at this point is to find what process is messing up.