FrameMaker crashes and Acrobat Pro 9 Extended

[reynolds at semicool.com]

First, let me apologize if this is a topic that has already been
discussed. I’ve been on the road working out-of-state contracts for the
better part of a year and I’m very out of the loop. That said


Short version: I’ve long had serious problems creating PDFs from within
FrameMaker (and other apps), and I now think Acrobat Pro 9 Extended is the
culprit. I’m wondering if anyone else has had the same experience or if
I’m off base.

Long version: I got my first Windows machine a few years ago and installed
TCS1. Things went fine for about six months, then the PDF creation
problems started. FrameMaker would crash every time I tried either to
print to PDF or to distill to a .ps file. The workaround: keep fiddling
until I could get a single page to distill. After that, I could usually
get the entire document to distill.

I now think the problems were introduced when I uninstalled Acrobat 3D
(which shipped with TCS1) and installed Acrobat Pro 9 Extended.

PDF generation from within FrameMaker remained a major problem for years.
I blamed it on the hardware and a few weeks ago replaced the Windows
desktop with a MacBook Pro and Bootcamp. I reinstalled TCS1 and again,
things ran fine. I was convinced that my problem HAD been hardware
related.

But then I purchased and installed TCS2.5, which put Acrobat Pro 9
Extended back on my system. Since then, I haven’t been able to distill a
single file that's more than one page in length. They all crash FrameMaker
(both FM8 and FM9) at the very first page, and I get the identical error
messages I got on the old Windows desktop.

As a test, I distilled several of these crashing files at a client site
running plain old Acrobat Pro 9 and they ran without a hitch. So


Has anyone else had similar problems? I haven’t seen Acrobat Pro 9
Extended problem reports on the web. On the other hand, I’ve had identical
(and major) problems on two entirely different systems. Can anyone shed
some light?

Many thanks,

   --Donna Reynolds