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Jmountain
Participant
February 24, 2026
Question

I am unable to open Adobe Acrobat DC unless I run as admin

  • February 24, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 15 views

After the latest update to 25.001.21223 I am unable to run Acrobat on Windows 11 unless I choose to run Acrobat as administrator. If I run it as a normal user the program will appear briefly in task manager then will silently crash. After looking at event viewer I can see that it is crashing with “Faulting module Acrobat.dll” 0xc0000005.

I’ve tried repairing the install, checking that protected mode is disabled, re-registering the dll file, checked folder permissions and ownership, acrobat cleaner tool, fresh install of acrobat, cleared adobe cache, sfc scan, ran without plugins folder, updated visual C++ redistributables, windows updates,  editing the registry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe|Adobe Acrobat\DC\Privileged and added DWORD bProtectedMode set to the value of 0. 

None of these have worked for me. Any help would be appreciated. 

    3 replies

    kglad
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 25, 2026

    i have the same acrobat version running on win 11.  what os build version are you usiung?

     

    i avoid win 11 updates as long as i can because they are so problematic.  currently, i’m using

     

    Version    10.0.26100 Build 26100
     

    Peru Bob
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 25, 2026
    John T Smith
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 24, 2026

    > latest update to 25.001.21223

     

    Updating what? Is that a Windows update?

    Peru Bob
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    February 25, 2026

    @John T Smith 

    It is an Acrobat update.