Acrobat Reader X crash when printing

brian-

Don't know if its connected or not, but reviewing a number of posts below, and trouble shooting some other similar issues on a number of devices, there seems to be an O-S compatibility issue "encouraging" people to upgrade to WIN-10. With FORCED updates coming in WIN-10, and hidden unspecified changes to security and privacy in WIN-10, I'm monitoring some of these things now for potential issues. Just wanted to pass this along.

I had success with the "Compatibility" fixes suggested below, so your solution might lie in that direction.

One caution, tho- with the main justification for ADOBE pushing their latest update being an effort to plug security holes in previous versions, and the only solutions to the resulting crashes being to disable security locks or run in previous modes (I had to go all the way back to win-98/Me to succeed) I see a major RED FLAG with this latest update. That some have been struggling with this since last February, it's clear that if this is a known bug that REMAINS uncorrected for this long, there may be some legitimate cause for concern. That the problem MAY NOT be an ADOBE problem, but a WINDOWS compatibility problem, and not only with ADOBE but with certain suddenly "Incompatible" printer drivers in WIN-7 that can only be corrected by allowing an upgrade from ANY previous windows [ some here are running WIN-XP ~30% market share user base, even nowadays !!! ], Server-2k, 3k, etc) to WIN-10, I see a major red flag. A forced upgrade to WIN-10 is a real concern.

I'd love to be corrected on this. I'm just commenting on what I've noticed. Sincerely- I MAY be missing something.

Best to you and all here,

C.

Our friend the Protected Mode anti-printing bug has returned with the advent of Adobe Reader 11.0.09. The bug must have been fixed at some point after my original problem with this in Reader X, where I found that disabling Protected Mode allowed printing to LAN printers. Tead my posts in the thread above, and you will see that, at least in my experience, the problem was limited to printing to shared printers within the same subnet (i.e. where either the printer or the shared printer host is in the same subnet as the client computer--printing to the same shared printer via the same share host but across a VPN, and thus from a different subnet, did not cause the problem.

At any rate, from some point in the further evolution of Adobe X, the problem disappeared, and I no longer had to disable protected mode to get network printing working correctly. This persisted up through Adobe Reader 11.0.08; however, when I updated some stations to 11.0.09, the problem returned, albeit with a slightly different manifestation. While it does not crash upon attempting to print to a network printer, it simply does nothing; it does not pass the job to the print spooler on the server hosting the printer share, and it never makes it to the printer.

So I am back to creating this .reg value (that disables Protected Mode) on affected computers; so far these are just  Windows XP computers, since many of my clienst are simply not going to upgrade or replace all of their still-working XP computers yet:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown]
"bProtectedMode"=dword:00000000

Ran into the same issue you were experiecing, have you checked the Default Printer?  Once I defaulted the user's printer to one of the office printers, Adobe X stopped freezing.  Switched it back to their home printer, which was not connected, the freezing returned. For giggles, I defaulted to a couple of the non-Adobe PDF Printers, freezing returned.

There are a couple of workarounds posted here http://forums.adobe.com/message/4142897#4142897.

In short, you can turn on "Sharing" in the printer properties, and give it a "Share Name"...should print OK after that. It worked for me.

Cain

Yea, had the same issues, but with almost 260 Citrix servers.  Created package using the customization wizard where I turned off the enhanced security "Protected Mode at Startup", EULA, and all the other stuff you don't want your users messing with and deployed to our test farm and it functioned like a dream.  Last week I applied the recent security updates 10.11 and 10.12 and everything look fine, however, I will have to admit that I didn't kill a tree testing the printing fuctionality.  Well, I'm into day two of updating my production farm with this new version of Reader and it's security updates along with latest updates for Flash and Shockwave.  I'm about 85% done when the phone starts ringing off the hook, it's our Help Desk which  is getting calls from users stating they can't print.  I test and sure enough as soon as I hit the print button, Reader crashes.  I checked my test farm and same thing is happening there where I was able to print prior to the security updates.  So I spend the next two hours un-installing 10x  and re-install the 8.2.6 version we have been using without issue for as long as I can remember till I can get a handle on things.  Run through my install again with the custom mst file, it works, install the security patch and it is now broken.  Seems the security updates over-write your custom settings.  I now have a post install script that sets the application and security settings to the state that I want them. 

We didn't upgrade to 9x on our Citrix farm due to all the horror stories I read about  on the Citrix and Adobe forums.  When is Adobe going to address the original issue with 10x, why does your application crash when you try to print with the default security settings.  Please fix-it!

I find it very, very upsetting that Adobe Tech Support has ignored this problem for over one year.

I have experienced this very same problem on dozens of PCs that where upgraded to Reader X.

To quote a previous writer "This bug is more than a year old, why isn't it fixed???"  Over one year has gone by.

This demonstrates that Adobe does not really care about users of Adobe Reader X.

Adobe Reader is not suitable anymore for corporate use.  Far too much support required to maintain end user problems.

Can someone suggest another product from another vendor that we can use in place of Reader X?

Thank you.

I had this problem of Reader X hanging up when printing to Brother MFC-9840-CDW via PC-Fax v.2 (which is a fax program).  Reader X did not hang up when printing to the Brother MFC-9840-CDW as a printer or when printing to a HP LaserJet 220dtn.

The AdobeReaderPatch10.1.2_cpsid_92870.exe did not help but disenabling Protected Mode at startup resolved the hanging up of Reader X when printing to Brother MFC-9840-CDW via PC-Fax v.2.

Same problem with Adobe X crashing on multiple machines in multiple locations, all trying to print on a network printer.  Disabling protected mode seems to be the solution.  This bug is more than a year old, why isn't it fixed???

I had this problem and tried everything you people suggest, but none of it helped.

I renamed the user's local profile to username_OLD and had her log back in. This fixed the problem.

Corrupt profile.

Just so you know, Adobe - this issue has just recently reared it's ugly head on my own pc: when trying to print (hit print button or otherwise attempt to print) Adobe X (fully updated as of today's date) immediately crashes. Doesn't matter which printer is set as default, local or network. When I take off the protected mode thing, it's fine.

This is a machine running XP SP3, also fully updated.

I haven't tried it on the other machine, running Windows 7, but I know it was working last week, so I'll letcha know!