This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Avatar for Username

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Firefox crashes when printing to PDF

emdoubtfire
emdoubtfire
more options

Firefox keeps freezing and crashing when I try to Print to PDF. I had the same issue a few months ago and it was fixed by turning off hardware acceleration, but that isn't working this time. Have tried: - Reinstalling firefox - In troubleshooting mode - problem is still there - Getting rid of all extensions and themes - Restarting computer - Turning off hardware acceleration

The only other change is my ESET Antivirus ran out on friday and I only updated it today - could there be something in that that's causing the crash? Don't know what else to try, but I need to save to PDF a lot for work and really don't want to have to switch to Chrome.

Firefox keeps freezing and crashing when I try to Print to PDF. I had the same issue a few months ago and it was fixed by turning off hardware acceleration, but that isn't working this time. Have tried: - Reinstalling firefox - In troubleshooting mode - problem is still there - Getting rid of all extensions and themes - Restarting computer - Turning off hardware acceleration The only other change is my ESET Antivirus ran out on friday and I only updated it today - could there be something in that that's causing the crash? Don't know what else to try, but I need to save to PDF a lot for work and really don't want to have to switch to Chrome.

All Replies (1)

jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
jscher2000 - Support Volunteer
  • Top 25 Contributor
more options

Hi, are you using the built-in "Save to PDF" option under "Destination", or an external printer driver such as "Adobe PDF" or "Microsoft Print to PDF"?

If you are using the built-in "Save to PDF" feature, you could try disabling the embedding of links and see whether that makes any difference. Here's how:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

More info on about:config: Configuration Editor for Firefox. The moderators would like us to remind you that changes made through this back door aren't fully supported and aren't guaranteed to continue working in the future.

(2) In the search box in the page, type or paste save_as_pdf and pause while the list is filtered

Firefox should display two preferences:

  • print.save_as_pdf.internal_destinations.enabled => enables internal links within the PDF
  • print.save_as_pdf.links.enabled => enables embedding links outside the PDF

(3) Try setting both preferences to false (double-click to switch between true and false)

Any difference?

Oh... and more generally, if you are getting the Mozilla Crash Reporter form, your Firefox may have logged some data that would help track down the cause of the problem. You can submit that data to Mozilla and share it with forum volunteers to see whether it points to the solution. Please check the support article "Firefox crashes - asking for support" for steps to get those crash report IDs from the about:crashes page, and then post some of the recent ones here.