Hello, Taco and Anita, you are geniuses! shell_escape was set to false, indeed. However, it fails further. My ch6.pdf output file isn't created at all whenever I insert \externalfigure[f01.pdf]. The log says ... systems : begin file ch6 at line 10 \@sl@\@@shortsectionnumber=\count214 section : 1 Random numbers \@sl@\textunderscore=\count215 (././f01.pdf.rli) figures : dimensions of f01.pdf are determined externally \@sg@\crossreferenceobject=\count216 (./ch6.tuo) fonts : resetting map file list fonts : using map file: texnansi-public-lm fonts : using map file: original-base fonts : using map file: ec-public-lm fonts : using map file: ec-base fonts : using map file: lm-ec fonts : using map file: 8r-base fonts : using map file: t5-base fonts : using map file: texnansi-base fonts : using map file: qx-base fonts : using map file: original-ams-base fonts : using map file: original-ams-euler fonts : using map file: original-public-lm fonts : using map file: qx-public-lm fonts : using map file: t5-public-lm [1.1] [2.2] subsection : 1.1 Uniform distribution subsection : 1.2 Random integers [3.3] subsection : 1.3 Normal distribution [4.4] systems : end file ch6 at line 91 system : cont-err loaded (c:/TeXLive2007/texmf-dist/tex/context/base/cont-err.tex systems : no file 'cont-sys.tex', using 'cont-sys.rme' instead ) ) Here is how much of TeX's memory you used: 1675 strings out of 58098 29794 string characters out of 548810 4596067 words of memory out of 5529777 41303 multiletter control sequences out of 10000+50000 77322 words of font info for 68 fonts, out of 1200000 for 2000 192 hyphenation exceptions out of 8191 47i,22n,60p,526b,1090s stack positions out of 5000i,500n,6000p,200000b,5000s -- Best regards, Vyatcheslav Yatskovsky