If you want to setup a Free Network PDF printer, that saves all the documents printed (as pdf files) to a network shared location, you can do it for free, using the following:-
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/
And then making the following configuration changes so it runs all the time “as a service”
- Install the PDFCreator above in server mode and make sure it does as you would expect.
- You then need the Resource Kit for your server version. (Windows only)
- unpack/install the Resource Kit, and copy instsrv.exe and srvany.exe to C:WINNTSYSTEM32 (I like to use the system32 just in case the command is not in the PATH)
- install srvany.exe as a service by running the command from a command prompt:instsrv PDFCreator c:winntsystem32srvany.exe
- run regedit, and
- go to HKLMSystemCurrentControlSetServicesPDFCreator
- Add a key “Parameters” under PDFCreator
- in “Parameters”, add a string (REG_SZ) value “Application”
- assign the following to “Application”“C:Program FilesPDFCreatorPDFCreator.exe”
(or wherever you installed the program) - Close regedit
- Open your Service manager and locate PDFCreator
- go to the “Log on” property, (“Startup” button in NT4 and Property->”Log on” tab in Win 2000 and 2003)
- do ONE of the following
- if you need the PDFCreator interface (monitor), select System Account and check “Allow service to interact with Desktop”.This will show the main window and allow you to see the “queue/monitor”. However, the application can be closed even if the primary service appears running.
- if you don’t need the monitor, do not check the “Allow interact…”, or select This Account and use an admin user’s login.Running the service this way will disable the primary interface, but you can still change settings and view logs by using the shortcut provided by the PDFCreator installation in the Start Menu.
- Make sure “Startup Type” is set to Automatic
- Start the service.
We have had this running for a couple of years now on a production server and it has been very stable.
