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Acrobat 26.002.21931 (64-bit) creates 10,000+ USER objects / 12,000+ windows, exhausts the Windows desktop heap and freezes the whole PC

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Product: Adobe Acrobat (64-bit) 26.002.21931, Continuous track, Creative Cloud subscription

OS: Windows 11 Home 25H2, build 26200.9550

Hardware: Dell XPS 17 9710, Intel i7-11800H, 64 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop

SUMMARY

Since mid-September 2026 my laptop froze completely 8 times (screen locked, no input, Sign out hangs, only the power button works). Windows never blue-screened. Each freeze is preceded by the System event log entry Win32k 704 "A desktop heap allocation failed", followed by Explorer.EXE, ctfmon.exe and dwm.exe crashing.

A per-process monitor running every minute shows Acrobat.exe is the process filling the desktop heap:

- 2026-09-23 14:17 -> 14:18: Acrobat.exe went from 205 to 10,000 USER objects (the per-process cap) within one minute, right after a second Acrobat window opened a PDF. Session total went 3,577 -> 13,241. The PC froze about 30 seconds later.

- 2026-09-23 14:42: a freshly launched Acrobat.exe, sitting on the Home screen with NO document open, owned 12,105 top-level and child windows (counted with EnumWindows/EnumChildWindows). Every other process on the machine combined owned about 650.

- Even idle, Acrobat.exe holds about 1,390 windows for hours.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE (on my machine)

1. Launch Acrobat, stay on the Home screen. Count windows owned by Acrobat.exe (Process Explorer or EnumWindows): ~1,400 immediately, sometimes >12,000.

2. Open a PDF in a second Acrobat window. USER objects for Acrobat.exe jump to the 10,000 cap within a minute.

3. Once the interactive desktop heap (default 20 MB) is exhausted, Windows logs event 704 and the shell crashes; the PC must be power-cycled.

EXPECTED: Acrobat holds a few hundred windows/USER objects like any other desktop app.

OBSERVED: Thousands of windows at idle, 10,000 USER objects after opening a PDF, desktop heap exhausted, whole PC frozen.

WORKAROUNDS

- Uninstalling Acrobat 26.002.21931 (2026-09-23). No freeze since.

- Raising the interactive desktop heap to 40 MB only delays the freeze.

SETTINGS AT THE TIME

- Generative AI features were enabled during the freezes; the 12,105-window burst happened with them still enabled.

- Acrobat was the default PDF handler.

I can provide the per-minute CSV log of USER/GDI/window counts per process for 2026-09-22/23, Windows System and Application event log extracts around each freeze, and a snapshot of all processes at the moment of the 704 event. Has anyone else seen Explorer crashes or full-PC freezes with this build?

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Dazzling_friend4c0b

Participant

Same failure here on an older build, 26.001.21771 (64-bit, Creative Cloud), Windows 11 25H2 (26200), 64 GB RAM. So it isn't new in 21931.

Trigger: a PDF downloaded in Chrome auto-opens in Acrobat. It's intermittent: 2 hard freezes in about 13 opens over 2 weeks.

Captured with a 15-second perfmon log: within 45 s of Acrobat starting, one Acrobat.exe went from 553 to 276,474 handles and 42 MB to 5.4 GB private bytes. System-wide handles went from 233k to 792k, free RAM dropped 9 GB, and non-paged pool grew 440 MB. The desktop was unusable about 2 minutes later and needed a power cycle. No Win32k 704 events in my case. Every launch also logs MsiInstaller 1035 + 11730 (Error 1730), but that happens on good launches too.

Workaround: PDFs now open in the browser, and a watchdog script kills Acrobat.exe above 20k handles. Happy to provide logs.

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Andrew Nicholls

Participant

Not sure why my very detailed response wasn’t allowed, but I’ve had this issue with this version, too - uninstalled and reinstalled an earlier version and have been fine since.

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DouglasDaveyWaikatoNZ

Participating Frequently

Is there a handy guide you used for how to download and install an earlier version?

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Andrew Nicholls

Participant

I just had claude code do it

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netmasque

Participant

Same for me. Been trying to track down this issue for several days. Finally caught it with an open powershell.

Acrobat.exe PID 47688

Handles: 2,257,584

Threads: 752,275

Private RAM: 43,073 MB

trying to run a stop process from powershell then crashed the system completely with memory dump.

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @netmasque

I hope you are doing well, and sorry for the trouble. Could you please collect the crash logs and share them with us for further investigations?

Please collect the logs using the steps suggested in the following links:

Crash and freeze logs: Share the logs.
Acrobat Diagnostic logs: Once these are collected, share the created log ID.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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netmasque

Participant

unfortunately windows ended up failing to write the full memory dump of the system (It would have also been a 128 gig file..)

I can tell you the instability and loss of control of the windows desktop started shortly after opening a small PDF on my desktop. I’ve been tracking resource handlers for several days.. Discord had a linear smaller growth.. and while Adobe products were 2nd in line for growth while not used.. Acrobat exploded and ate the system.

Acrobat package 26.002.21931 (64-bit) / Windows 11 Pro 25H

It jumped from:
171 user objects - 10,000
938 handles in 2 minutes to 403,038.. and then 2,350,977 over next hour.
43 threads to 134,090 in 2 minutes, to 783,433 over next hour.
245MiB to 7,848 to 44,849 private memory.

Commit memory, system handles, kernel pools all increase. Explorer starts to crash.. machine basically becomes unusable, must hard reboot.

Environment. Windows 11 Pro 25H2, build 26200.9457; Ryzen 9 9950X3D; RTX 5090; approximately 64 GiB RAM; ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Hero, BIOS 1715. Package version 26.002.21931 is confirmed by the uninstall event; the former binary hash/version was not captured.

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Passionate_Glitter5CD3Author

Participant

Update after 9 days: zero freezes since uninstalling 26.002.21931 (8 freezes in the 3 weeks before). Same machine, same workload, nothing else changed, so I'm confident Acrobat was the cause.

One correction to my original post: the window counts (12,105 and ~1,390 idle) were overstated. My monitoring script counted nested child windows more than once. The USER object numbers are accurate: Acrobat.exe went from 205 to 10,000 USER objects (the per-process cap) within one minute, and Windows logged Win32k event 704 right after.

Anand Sri Bhattacharya, BaniVerma: three users in this thread now report freezes or hangs on this build, all starting after the Sep 17 update. Can you confirm whether this is logged as a known issue, and whether a rollback to 26.002.21901 is supported in the meantime? I can share the per-minute CSV log and the event log extracts.

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Meenakshi Negi

Community Manager

Hi Passionate_Glitter5CD3,

We are sorry for the trouble this may have caused.

We have reported this issue to the team. However, to investigate this behaviour further, we require your assistance. Please collect the logs using the steps suggested in the following links:

Crash and freeze logs: Share the logs.
Acrobat Diagnostic logs: Once these are collected, share the created log ID.

We look forward to your response.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

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adaptable_hope303b

Participant

This is ABSOLUTELY an Adobe resource leak. Here is what you are doing to my laptop. I opened two single page files, tried to close Adobe and then this. This has occurred on my box EVERY time I have opened Adobe since the update. With various files.
LOOK AT THAT COMMIT SIZE!!!

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @adaptable_hope303b

I hope you are doing well, and sorry for the trouble you had.

If you have the latest build of Acrobat installed: 26.002.21931, Out of cycle update, Sep 17, 2026. And have tried all the suggestions and steps shared in the thread.

Please collect the logs from the affected machine and share them with us for further investigation.

Share the current version of the operating system installed, the logs, and we’ll get this investigated by the product team. To collect the logs, please refer to these articles:

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/collect-logs-crash-freeze.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-diagnostics.html

Please reach out if you have any questions.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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adaptable_hope303b

Participant

My computer is doing exactly the same since the update. ADOBE - this is a disaster and needs to be fixed ASAP. Give us a supported rollback to the prior version if you can’t get your crap together and fix like tomorrow!!!

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intuitive_Songbird8f2d

Participant

Same problem here with the same build, starting on the same day.

Product: Adobe Acrobat (64-bit) 26.002.21931 (latest per Check for Updates)

OS: Windows 11, build 26200, Slovak locale

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 (desktop), dual monitors

Since 23 Sep 2026 Acrobat freezes ("Not responding") right after opening almost any PDF, and Windows then closes it (Application Hang, Event ID 1002, Hang Signature 9d1e, Hang Type 134217728). Today alone it happened 5 times. No third-party modules were loaded in the hung process.

Already tried, none of it helped:

- disabling Protected Mode

- resetting preferences (%APPDATA%\Adobe\Acrobat\DC)

- no third-party plug-ins installed

- changing the default printer

- updating the NVIDIA driver to 32.0.16.1692 (clean install)

- Help > Repair Installation

- full uninstall and reinstall of Acrobat

So it looks like a regression in 26.002.21931, not a local configuration issue. Adobe team, could you please confirm this is a known issue and advise on a fix or how to roll back to the previous build until it is fixed?

Róbert

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BaniVerma

Community Manager

Hi @intuitive_Songbird8f2d,

Thank you for sharing the detailed event data and the steps you have already tried. We understand how disruptive it is to have Acrobat repeatedly become unresponsive across multiple Windows 11 PCs, especially when the issue recurs after a restart and affects different PDF files.

Since the installation repair, clean reinstall, preference reset, temporary security tests, and reinstall of the Visual C++ components have not resolved the behavior, the next useful step is to capture diagnostic data while Acrobat is unresponsive. This will provide the process information needed to investigate what Acrobat is doing during the hang.

Please collect the following during the next occurrence:

In Windows Task Manager, right-click Acrobat.exe while Acrobat shows Not Responding, then select Create dump file. Please take two or three dumps at different intervals while the application remains unresponsive. The full instructions are available here: Collect logs when Acrobat or Reader freezes.
Run Acrobat Diagnostics with Advanced logs and Acrobat process monitor enabled, reproduce the issue, stop diagnostics, and copy the generated log ID. You can find the steps here: Adobe Acrobat Diagnostics.

When you reply, please share the diagnostics log ID and confirm whether the affected PDFs are stored locally, on a network location, or in a synced cloud folder. If possible, also let us know whether the same PDFs open normally in another PDF viewer on the affected PCs.

Please share those details, and we’ll take it from there.

Thanks,
^BS

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DFWTechGuy

Participating Frequently

That sounds more like an Acrobat resource leak than a normal Windows desktop heap issue, especially since Acrobat is reaching 10,000 USER objects and thousands of windows while idle.

The fact that uninstalling 26.002.21931 stopped the freezes is a pretty strong clue. I would keep the heap at its default rather than increasing it further, since that only delays the failure.

I'd report this to Adobe with the exact build, Win32k Event 704, USER/window counts, and the reproduction steps. If possible, also test the same workload with Generative AI disabled and note whether the window count still grows.

The per-minute CSV and event logs you mentioned would be very useful for Adobe to reproduce this.

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