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ConanTheArnbarian
Participant
April 7, 2017
Question

Stop RdrCEF.exe from running

  • April 7, 2017
  • 6 replies
  • 42717 views

Hello, we have Citrix servers where Reader DC is installed.  I was spending time checking the processes running on the server and there were many, many instances of RdrCEF.exe running.  After doing some research on this process I'm still not clear on what it does.  Is it used for Reader updates?  Is it used for syncing cloud services?  Maybe both?  Different posts say different things.  Either way, we update Reader through other means and we do not need the cloud service, so we do not need or want RdrCEF running.  I've searched and searched, but cannot find anything about how to stop this process from running other than renaming the .exe file.

I saw this post below where other people were complaining about it on Citrix servers too, but there was nothing in there about stopping RdrCEF from running. 

RdrCEF high cpu usage

I have implemented these registry keys, but RdrCEF.exe still runs.  Am I missing other registry keys to stop the RdrCEF.exe from launching?  Is there anything else I can do, other than rename the .exe file?

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown]

"bUpdater"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cCloud]

"bAdobeSendPluginToggle"=dword:00000000

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cServices]

"bUpdater"=dword:00000000

"bToggleWebConnectors"=dword:00000001

"bTogglePrefsSync"=dword:00000001

"bToggleAdobeDocumentServices"=dword:00000001

"bToggleAdobeSign"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cSharePoint]

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\cWebmailProfiles]

"bDisableWebmail"=dword:00000001

Thank you!

This topic has been closed for replies.

6 replies

S
Sathish Kumar2448655922lw
Participant
May 17, 2022

were you able to resolve this issue?

 

U
UnoDueTre250817303rgs
Participant
June 30, 2022

OMG!

Cannot beleive after so many years the problem still stays and not a word from Adobe!

I have 25+ processes running on my RDP server, its really sad. 

With every release Adobe keeps touching new bottom.

 

Adobe Team - any update/ideas how to stop using Adobe solutions?

    Z
    Zack5C27
    Participating Frequently
    March 4, 2021

    unless they need to open PDFs I would advise removing the software for reader. 

    Even if they do need PDFs on that device, there are better software to use for them that dont bloat your servers and computers. 

    Adobe's number 1 reply is to just about any issue with their poorly written software, "thats not an issue its a feature, it should be like that. Oh it impacts your environement, maybe you should change your environment."


    A
    abdekker
    Participant
    May 9, 2019

    Disable as follows:

    * Close Acrobat Reader

    * Open Windows Explorer

    * Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroCEF

    * Rename RdrCEF.exe to RdrCEF-Backup.exe

    * Accept administrator UAC prompt for changing the name of a "protected" system file

    Continue using Acrobat Reader. No apparent side effects.

    To reverse, perhaps because you need one or more of the functions RdrCEF.exe provides, close Acrobat Reader and rename RdrCEF-Backup.exe.

    C
    ChrisMottram
    Participant
    October 7, 2019
    We had the same issue and this worked for a short while, but RdrCEF.exe came back. Presumeably Acrobat replaced it. I created a file in notepad and called it RdrCEF.exe. So far so good.
    A
    AKOBUS
    Participant
    February 6, 2020

    We do have the same issue on RDS Session hosts affecting performance.

    Is there any plans from Adobe to address this issue?

    E
    ericr30395346
    Participant
    October 4, 2018

    Same issue here.

    Running Server 2016 Datacenter in Azure as a terminal server. 40-50 people connected to the server at a time, yet I see this service running 120+ times  = \

    I would LOVE to eliminate this!

    L
    leer22668289
    Participant
    November 19, 2019

    Same issue here.

     

    20/25 users per Windows 2008R2 Citrix 7.15 CU4 server.

    RdrCEF.exe process is running away with high CPU, killing the system.

     

    I've renamed the file and created a blank text file in its place.  OK to stop the process running, but causes other issues with users using Acrobat.

     

    This issue only started for us after update to Reader DC from 17.009.20044 to 19.012.20036

    I'm rolling back to 17.009.20044 until this issue is resolved.

     

    Adobe - please advise asap.  It's obviously an onoging issue with Reader.

    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    April 21, 2017

    Hello everyone,

    Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.

    Ideally RdrCEF processes shouldn't consume system resources as significant as mentioned by you.

    To understand the issue, we would require following information:

    • Environment/Platform/System information
    • Application(Reader) version
    • Are you using/installed any screen reader(JAWS, NVDA, etc.)
    • How much time reader is running for ?
    • Fiddler logs for analyzing network traffic 
    • Exact steps to reproduce the issue(capture a video to reproduce the issue if possible)
    • Processes memory dump
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "RdrCEF" process and create dump File
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "AcroRd32" process and create dump file

    -Thanks

    Sunil Soni

    A
    Anonymous
    April 24, 2017

    Where can I place the Dump File?

    • Environment/Platform/System information
      • Server 2008R2 / Citrix XenApp 6.0
    • Application(Reader) version
      • Reader DC 2017.009.20044
    • Are you using/installed any screen reader(JAWS, NVDA, etc.)
      • No
    • How much time reader is running for ?
      • unknown / not consitent
    • Fiddler logs for analyzing network traffic
      • do not have this.
    • Exact steps to reproduce the issue(capture a video to reproduce the issue if possible)
      • cannot predictably replicate the issue.  We use the application to generate a web report for printing
    • Processes memory dump
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "RdrCEF" process and create dump File
        • Where can I upload this file?
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "AcroRd32" process and create dump file
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    April 25, 2017

    upload and send via https://cloud.acrobat.com/send

    -Thanks

    Sunil Soni

    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    April 10, 2017

    Hello conanthearnbarian,

    Some services(Like Document Cloud, Create PDF, Export PDF, etc) of Reader DC are based on HTML and RdrCEF.exe is responsible for taking care of these HTML views. There is independent RdrCEF.exe process for each HTML view loaded in the application.

    So RdrCEF is not a detachable process and if you rename the RdrCEF.exe to stop this process, Some part of Reader DC won't be functioning at all.

    Overall, You can't disable RdrCEF.exe process.

    Please let us know if you are facing any other issue with RdrCEF(not just the n number of processes).

    -Thanks

    Acrobat Team

    B
    bobferguson1
    Participant
    April 18, 2017

    I have seen RdrCEF taking 49.97% of the (quad) processor bandwidth (2 separate PIDs) on Windows 10 when only one .pdf document was open and being displayed. When I closed the doc, network (Ethernet) traffic stopped and processor load returned to normal, when I opened the document again, the network traffic started again. No scrolling, editing, or user activity was happening, but this behavior was observed for 10 minutes. Something is transmitting and receiving data across the network while this document is active; and it is taking major processor bandwidth. Looks like a security issue.

      A
      Anonymous
      April 20, 2017

      We have a Citrix environment as well.  We have seen this rdrCEF.exe process collect up to 4GB of Memory and 25% of the processor and just hold it.  This is extremely problematic for our multi-user environment.  We have seen one user with 3 such instances of rdrCEF.exe running.  This caused a variety of other issues as the server quickly ran out of resources. 

      I was able to log in, see these processes, end the tasks via the windows task manager, and see that nothing closed on the users UI console.  In fact, ending the tasks did not appear to affect what the user was doing at all. 

      We are running the latest version of Adobe Reader DC.

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