Printing does not work or it is wrong

Back4 service is running and processing images but it crashes on printing. The XML is created in the output folder, but then crash. Another back4 with the same configuration and hardware prints ok.

SOLUTION: uninstall and then reinstall the PDFLIB resources and NORMALIZER. Do not use the -repair option. Check also the fonts installed on the server.

Ticket 402823.

The error message may be:

IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection. An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

You can try the following:

1.Stop IIS (and Back4 - if there's Back4 service running on that server).

2.Move all the fonts from the c:\Program Files\Common Files\TeraDP\PDFLib\Resource\Font to a temporary folder.

3.Restart IIS (and Back4 - if there's Back4 service running on that server).

4.Print a page (even if empty, without fonts).

5.Stop IIS (and Back4 - if there's Back4 service running on that server).

6.Put the fonts back in c:\Program Files\Common Files\TeraDP\PDFLib\Resource\Font.

7.Restart IIS (and Back4 - if there's Back4 service running on that server).

8.Print the page that gave error before.

Note

The above procedure empties the internal caches of the Normalizer.

The error message may be:

Error in the activity 'PDFGenerator': 

'Error calling the plug-in 'ParseAPDFL.dll': 

"Retrieving the COM class factory for component with CLSID {DB428D91-9CFF-4D9A-A7C4-844D3F024E27} 

failed due to the following error: 800703fa Illegal operation attempted on a registry key that has been marked for deletion. 

(Exception from HRESULT: 0x800703FA)." (ERR0503)' (ERR1011)

This requires re-registering of COM components on all IIS and all Back4 servers.

1.Stop the Back4 service an all Back4 servers, and then stop IIS service on all IIS servers.

2.Execute un-registering from the Administrator Command Prompt with the following commands:

regsvr32 /u C:\Tera\GN4\COM\dsofile_x64.dll

regsvr32 /u C:\Tera\GN4\COM\PdfLib_x64.dll

regsvr32 /u C:\Tera\GN4\COM\XmpFileHandler_x64.dll

pause

3.Execute re-registering from the Administrator Command Prompt with the following commands:

regsvr32 C:\Tera\GN4\COM\dsofile_x64.dll

regsvr32 C:\Tera\GN4\COM\PdfLib_x64.dll

regsvr32 C:\Tera\GN4\COM\XmpFileHandler_x64.dll

pause

4.Restart all IIS services.

5.Restart all Back4 services.

The error message may be:

IOException: Unable to read data from the transport connection. An existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host.

You can try the following:

1.Open the page that gives the error, and create a new layer, one for each existing page layer.

2.Move all the items from the existing layer to a spare layer.

3.Delete the old layer when empty.

4.Try to print the page.

The error message may be:

Completed file watcher task from queue Generate PDF, file D:\Back4\pageXml\in\obj2405_14100223163361.xml  Cannot read parameters from input xml: Error in the activity 'call generate file': 'Error in the activity 'PDFGenerator': 'Error calling the plug-in 'ParseAPDFL.dll': "PDF Printing: 'D:\Temp\tmp5ba646f0b1cc43ddb777a95928bd3579.tmp' can't be created: Error merging eps \\serv.asp.local\namex\namey\imgLowRes\0\70\3FAF3AE48668C338EAB49930B82172DB_low.ps, run normalizer failed (2): Processing EPS '\\serv.asp.local\namex\namey\imgLowRes\0\70\3FAF3AE48668C338EAB49930B82172DB_low.ps': Warning Messages: %%[ Error: typecheck; OffendingCommand: imageDistiller ]%% Stack: -file- ...' (ERR1011)

The possible cause is the corruption of two files automatically generated by Adobe libraries during initialization and read during processing:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\TeraDP\PDFLib\Resource\Cmap\AdobeFnt13.1.lst

C:\Program Files\Common Files\TeraDP\PDFLib\Resource\Font\AdobeFnt13.1.lst

These files serve as a cache to speed up the read/write operations on fonts and cmap.

Somehow for unknown reasons, they get corrupted and printing starts to fail. The general advice is to follow this procedure to debug such printing problem:

1.Check if the l’eps/ps that is causing problem is corrupted.

2.If the file is not corrupted, try to restart IIS.

3.If it still gives errors, delete the mentioned two LST files, restart the IIS and retry.

How to check if an EPS or PS file is corrupted?

1.Try to open it in Photoshop and see if there are errors or messages.

2.Try to open PS with GhostView.

3.For a PS, try with Acrobat Distiller if it makes it to generate a PDF.
(Note: if you try to distill an EPS, typically the Distiller will fail as it expects a pure PS; the saving of PS from Photoshop is not a good idea, as usually the Photoshop changes the file, and so you don't have a reliable test).

PROBLEM

When printing via Back4 service on a server, which processes the printing tasks scheduled by Fred, you may encounter the CPU on 100% and the system disk full. The cause of the full disk was GN4 printing, that was creating a huge number of files in the temp folder e.g. C:\Users\<administratoruser>\AppData\Local\Temp.

This can be caused by specific conditions on pages.

In Edadmin4 you could see the pending and running tasks, but you could not delete them using the Delete button.

SOLUTION

Use the Task Manager to kill the Back4 service, and then delete the print tasks by SQL query:

delete * from gn_tasktable where gn_type = 9

Restart Back4.

As workaround, print using the Default printer (therefore IIS) and save PDF files putting them, where required, in the appropriate folder for the further transfer (e.g. in the FTP folder for Elara).