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Illustrator crashes when saving anything!

Well, my copy of Illustrator running on Windows Vista would not save for the past few days. At first I assumed it was a corrupted or funky file problem specific to the one file and found a work around file for Photoshop. A few days later I needed to use Illustrator to copy a vector into Photopshop and convert to a smart object. Every time I cut and pasted Illustrator would hang and then eventually crash and nothing would be pasted into Photoshop. Okay, so I decide I’ll save the Illustrator file and then place it in Photoshop via File / Place. Still no joy, the second I went to save, it crashed. Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy I created a blank canvas, typed something on it and go to save it, again Illustrator crashes with the message “Adobe Illustrator CS3 has stopped working”. Wonderful, so helpful, and the “Check online for a solution” wasn’t even working for me, but to this date even when it has worked in other programs it rarely provides a useful solution.

Time for some Google power. After doing a few searches I realize that this is not an isolated issue, and could be one of many problems. One post on a forum stands out though. Illustrator CS3, at least on Vista, requires that your Print Spooler be running. Well, this is another issue I have not solved yet. I have a randomly crashing Print Spooler. Anyway, I start up the print spooler and sure enough, Illustrator now saves. Why the print spooler is even needed I don’t know, but I think it would be helpful if when this happens illustrator could recognize it’s not running and say “Hey, your Print Spooler is not running, Illustrator requires it to be on, please start it up”, or something along those lines.

Here’s how you can check your print spooler.

Go to your start menu. In the search box type services. Your services dialog will open. Scroll down to Print Spooler. If it is running already then this might not be your problem, but try restarting it just in case. By the results of my Google search there are many other reasons why Illustrator might not be saving, but hopefully this helps some people out.

67 Comments to “Illustrator crashes when saving anything!”

  • Piotr

    Those of you who have the print spooler running and still have problems with illustrator crashing while saving files, check if your Adobe Version Cue service is running. This was the issue in my case. You can find it in the same place as the print spooler service.

  • Kristina

    Thank you so much! yay!

  • Monche

    Thanks a lot! You just saved my graduation thesis 🙂

  • Katie

    Unbelieveable!!! I try to fix this problem for many times. Really thank you. You just saved my graduate project too. 🙂

  • Katie

    Thanks a lot!!!!

    It’s save my life. I really mean it.

    Thank you 🙂

  • Dan

    Thanks man, you just saved me a lot of frustration!

  • heya basu

    Unfortunately this didnt work for me. 🙁
    Is there any other reason? i seriously cannot figure out and I need to upload some work immediately.

    • Corvus

      @ heya bas u

      I was having the same problem and was unable to fix it with the ‘print spooler’ solution alone (my print spooler was active).

      I have a Brother HL 2140 printer connected to a D-Link wifi router via usb.

      I was able to fix the problem by:
      1. turning off the router
      2. turning on the printer *then* the router
      3. rebooting my computer

      From there saving worked as it should.

      Hope that helps.

  • Dayna

    THANK YOU! This saved me from loads of frustration! Gotta love technology…

  • Martinez, Sebastian

    That worked immediatly! You saved my day…

  • Chris

    Amazing! Thanks for that, it worked straight away no issues. Very useful post!

  • phoebe

    Hi 🙂

    Thank you for writing this article! Unfortunately it didn’t help me 🙁 Any other advice? (I already tried what corvus suggested to basu)

  • Balkiss

    Simply restarting Print Spooler didn’t work for me.
    BUT I FIXED IT!! with an additional step:
    I had recently added a new “virtual” printer, and it hit me that it was since then I started having the problem. So I went into the “control panel” ( or settings), in “devices and printers”, I found the printer and removed it. Then restarted “Print Spooler” as you suggested, and tadaaa, solved.

  • Tania

    I’m the same as the previous poster – nothing was working to solve the problem but I just changed my default printer and BINGO! Thank you sooo much Balkiss!!!

  • sankarnath

    Thanks man.
    I had changed the password of the printer to which i was connected at the Uni.
    I updated it and did run the “print spooler” and it works fine. thanks guys

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