Virtual printer
How the CriticalPDF virtual printer behaves, what settings are available, and how the installer auto-configures it.
The CriticalPDF virtual printer is a standard Windows v4 print driver. It appears in Settings → Bluetooth & devices → Printers & scanners alongside every other printer on the machine.
The installer creates and configures it for you. There’s nothing to set up manually.
Default settings
| Setting | Default |
|---|---|
| Page size | Letter (8.5” × 11”) |
| Orientation | Portrait |
| Color | Auto (color if the source application supports it) |
| Resolution | 600 DPI |
| Fonts | Embed all used fonts |
These can be changed globally via Printer properties → Preferences, or per-job from any application’s print dialog. Most users never touch them.
Multi-page rendering
Documents with mixed page sizes (e.g., a Letter cover sheet followed by 11”×17” diagrams) are preserved as-is. The driver does not force a uniform page size unless explicitly configured to do so.
Color profiles
CriticalPDF embeds the source application’s ICC profile when one is present. For applications without color management, the driver uses sRGB IEC61966-2.1 by default.
Spooler-disabled hardening
A few Windows print-driver defaults can cause problems on a virtual printer and are disabled by CriticalPDF:
- SNMP polling — eliminates the multi-minute slowdown on large jobs that plagues most Windows TCP/IP print configurations.
- Bidirectional support — prevents back-channel data flow that doesn’t apply to a virtual printer scenario.
These are set automatically at install time. If you change them in Printer properties, the service will reset them on next start.
Self-healing
If the virtual printer is somehow removed — by an aggressive cleanup script, an over-zealous group policy, or a manual Remove-Printer — the service notices on its next health check and recreates the whole thing from scratch:
- The driver, if missing, is re-registered from the install folder.
- The port (
CRITICALPDF:) is recreated. - The printer queue is added with the original settings.
- The spooler is restarted if it had wedged.
No operator intervention required.
Manually removing or recreating
If you ever need to manage the queue by hand:
# Remove
Remove-Printer -Name CriticalPDF
# Recreate
Add-Printer -Name CriticalPDF `
-DriverName "CriticalPDF Driver" `
-PortName "CRITICALPDF:"Stop the service first if you want the removal to stick — otherwise it’ll be back within seconds.
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