Hi,

I'm trying to run a service on Vista that prints any pdf file dropped into a directory. The program works when started by hand. 

### print files dropped into this directory
use strict;
use File::Copy;

while(1)
{
  opendir(DIRH, "c:\\printpdf") or die "couldn't open: $!";
  open(FH, ">log.txt") or die "Cannot open log file";
  foreach (readdir DIRH) 
  {
    ### only take pdf files
    next unless /pdf$/i;

    ### acroread needs full path
    my $file = "c:\\PrintPDF\\$_";

    print FH "Found $file\n";
    #system "c:\\apps\\AcroRd32.lnk /p \"$file\"";
    system "c:\\apps\\AcroRd32.lnk /N /T \"$file\"";

    ### not sure how long acroread keeps the file open
    sleep 10;
    move("$_", "Done") or die "move failed: $!";
    

  }
  close(FH);
  closedir(DIRH);
  sleep 30;
}

[download]
When installed as service the print does not happen. I can see that AcroRd32 gets started but then hangs.

I assume that is because a GUI program cannot be run as service.

I also tried a printing alternativ found on this site: 

use Win32::API;

my $shellopen = new Win32::API("shell32", "ShellExecute", 
                             ['N', 'P', 'P', 'P', 'P', 'I'],
                              'N');
$shellopen->Call(0, "print", $file, 0, 0, 0);

[download]
Same problem - works when started manually - hangs when started as service.

Does anyone known a way to print PDFs w/o having to start any type of GUI application?

Thanx.

In reply to Printing PDFs as a windows service by stephanm

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