Adobe Acrobat Reader won’t print PDFs

In the last year or so, multiple systems have stopped printing PDFs when using Acrobat Reader with no errors or indication why. The job doesn’t appear in the print queue so fails within the Adobe software.

The problem has occurred in a number of versions of Acrobat Reader and Windows on workstations and terminal servers. The most recent problem was with Server 2012 R2 terminal server and Reader 11.0.10 with all but one user able to print PDFs.

After the usual net stop spooler command followed by net start spooler and a repair of Acrobat Reader I followed the steps below and yet another mystery printing error was fixed.

I’m not sure why this setting causes issues as one user on the server could print a PDF but the user with the problem couldn’t print the same PDF with the box checked. If you have any insight into why this fix works please let me know in the comments.

I’ve had a setting in Adobe Readers / Advanced Security cause me all sorts of odd issues….. since it’s two seconds to remove that checkmark I’d give that a whirl.

  • Open Reader
  • Select the Edit menu
  • Click Preferences
  • Select Security (Enhanced) in the left panel
  • Clear the check box in the top section “Enable protected mode at startup”
  • Close and re-open Acrobat Reader.
  • If it still doesn’t work open Preferences again and re-check the box.

 

Veeam Instant Recovery VM won’t boot after host failure

We were in the process of migrating VMs from one datacentre to another using Veeam Backup & Replication when our main host crashed with a CPU error. The production VMs had been running on the server for a few hours and hadn’t yet been fully replicated to the replication partner. One of the VMs is Server 2003 so was running in Instant Recovery mode as is couldn’t be migrated using replication like the other VMs.

Thankfully the server rebooted and all the VMs started without issue except the Server 2003 VM. When viewing the console it only displayed a black screen which was worrying as there was no backup of the last 6 hours of changes.

After submitting a case on the Veeam site a member of the support team called within 20 minutes and quickly got the VM up and running again. The issue in our case was that the Veeam B&R software is installed on a VM running on the host that crashed. When the VM restarted the Veeam services didn’t start in the required order. The Veeam vPower NFS service needs to start after the Veeam Backup service.

To fix the issue the only steps required were to restart the Veeam vPower NFS service on the system running Veeam B&R then start the VM.

Outlook Procedure Entry Point Error – Windows XP

This one came as a surprise since there aren’t many updates being released for Windows XP or Office 2010. On PCs running Windows XP 32bit SP3 and Office 2010, a recent update has caused an error when opening Outlook. The error message includes the message below and gives no option to continue to open the program.

The procedure entry point CompareStringOrdinal could not be located in the dynamic link library KERNEL32.dll

All the machines I’ve looked at so far with the error all worked fine after removing update KB4011273. Follow the steps below to remove the update and stop it from installing again.

  1. Go to Control Panel > Add or remove programs.
  2. Check the Show Updates box at the top right.
  3. Find the section with Office updates and uninstall KB4011273.
  4. Once it has finished uninstalling open Internet Explorer and go to http://www.update.microsoft.com/microsoftupdate/v6/default.aspx
  5. Select Custom.
  6. When available updates are shown uncheck the update and check the Don’t show this update again box.

    Don't show update
    Don’t show update Windows XP

The update should not be installed automatically and Outlook will now open. It will buy you enough time to get whatever data you need before buying something more recent.