Press "Enter" to skip to content

FIX: Illustrator CS4 silent crash in VirtualBox

I’ve been plagued by a strange problem in Illustrator CS4; whenever I try to File->Place something, and then save, it crashes. And not very craciously – It just goes away, my whole work just gone. No backup. No nothing. I guess you understand why I consider this a Bad Thing.

I’ve been experimenting with different solutions, trying to find some combination of luck and digital alchemy that will allow me to work in Illustrator without having to resort to a reboot into Windows 7.

I found this. But here’s the strange thing; in CS3, having the printer spoller off would be a problem. Mine was on, so I tried, on a hunch, turning it off.

And it worked. For some damn reason, it worked.

So:

  1. Start->Run
  2. Type “services.msc”, press OK
  3. Find “Printer spooler”.
  4. Right-click, choose “Stop”.

If you want to make this permanent, double-click the service and change the Startup type from Automatic to Disabled.

If you want a quick way to start or stop the service:

  1. Right-click anywhere on your desktop. Choose New->Shortcut.
  2. Type “net stop spooler”, without the quotes, in the first dialog page. Press Next.
  3. In the second, type the name you want for the shortcut, for instance “Stop print spooler”.
  4. Press Finish.
  5. Do steps 1-4 again, but use “net start spooler” and something like “Start print spooler”.

There you go. I still have no idea why the heck this works, and why Illustrator is throwing hissy fits over the print spooler – but it works. And for now, that’s enough.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.