Vista and Printing Nightmare

[Jalz]

Hello All,

Has anyone noticed FileMaker Pro (Advanced) 9v3 crashing whilst they print? If I print around 10 times, you can bet it will crash 4 times "FileMaker Pro has stopped working dialog box"....very inconsistant. Has anyone experienced the same behaviour???

Anyone know of any workarounds (please don't say use a Mac)

Edited October 9, 2008 by Guest

[Vaughan]

What type of printer? Do other apps have the same problem?

[Genx]

It might be file corruption - does it happen with more than one FileMaker DB?

I'm running 9.01 Advanced on Vista x64 and haven't had a crash yet.

[Jalz]

Thanks Guys,

We've got a fairly large deployment. It doesn't seem to be happening with any other applications at this point. I notice the crashing happening on a HP Laserjet 1505 (which I use) and a Ricoh multifunction device which another dept uses.

Genx: I'll try and recover the FileMaker db and see if that makes a difference. It's quite a large file, so will take me quite a while to rewrite it - wish FM had a tool which would generate a fresh new file (schema,layouts,scripts etc) from a ddr....

[Genx]

Genx: I'll try and recover the FileMaker db and see if that makes a difference. It's quite a large file, so will take me quite a while to rewrite it - wish FM had a tool which would generate a fresh new file (schema,layouts,scripts etc) from a ddr....

Just try a different File instead. If it crashes as often as you say it shouldn't be too hard to replicate.

[Jalz]

Hi Genx,

I've tried five independent files, it crash on every single one of them!

I've sent it to another "networked" printer and I'm having the same result. I think the next stage is to try and print one of the sample templates....any other ideas for troubleshooting

[Genx]

Does anything else crash per Vaughan's suggestion?

[Jalz]

No, I've tried Acrobat, Word, Excel, Outlook and Photoshop CS3 and internet Explorer. These apps print absolutely fine.

We're using Vista Enterprise, which I don't think FM support according to uk tech support - but I can't see much difference between enterprise and the other flavours of windows.

[Genx]

Meh I use ultimate.

That being said, from the site:

Cross-platform:

Windows XP, 2003, and Vista.

Mac OS X 10.4.8.*

Enterprise Description:

"This edition targets the enterprise segment of the market: it comprises a superset of the Vista Business edition. Additional features include support for Multilingual User Interface (MUI) packages, BitLocker Drive Encryption, and UNIX application-support."

It's a superset of business which is supported - it just has more features. They're just being level 1 tech support, they can't help it.

Guess the next question is if you can replicate it on a different PC with enterprise. And then if you can replicate it on a different PC with some other version.

[Jalz]

We've been testing this all day....kinda getting tired with all the combinations we have used.

So far used our betwork file, a brand new fresh filemaker template file locally, installed, uninstalled the drivers and we've now come to the conclusion that FM 9 seems to be "fairly" stable when printing using HP PCL drivers, however the new (hostbased) drivers in a NETWORKED vista environment, causes FileMaker to crash.

Thought we would test FM 8.5v2. This app just Freezes but does not log me out when printing (although once it is frozen I need to quit and relaunch)

Do you guys have any other ideas, things I can test, i'll be speaking to FM soon as I need this sorting asap!

[Vaughan]

Try the postscript drive for the HP printers if there is one.

[Jalz]

I'll ask the network manager if there is a postscript driver I can use.

Did some more testing with a "fresh" file, it seems as though FM is stable when the printer is local, but when the same printer is networked, and I try sending data to that printer FM Crashes. I wonder if its the way the server is setup?