Acrobat Processes hanging in Task Manager

We are seeing this issue in both a customer using Windows 365 (Windows 11Enterprise 25H2, Windows Defender Plan 1) and a customer that has local devices. (Windows 11 Business 25H2, ESET Endpoint Security).  We have other customers that are (so far) unaffected and we can’t really see a pattern to identify what the differences are between those affected and those not.

We were able to mitigate this in version 26.001.21563 by applying the following registry fixes:

HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown
HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown
bDisablePDFHandlerSwitching DWord -Value 1
bEnableAcroRd32PreLaunch DWord -Value 0

26.001.21662 is experiencing the issue even with this set.
We have now pushed out to also include:
bProtectedMode DWord -Value 0
bEnhancedSecurityStandalone DWord -Value 0
bEnhancedSecurityInBrowser DWord -Value 0
 

I will update this post when I have feedback from the end users.

The issue seems to occur fairly randomly.  When it crashes, if you kill the processes and open the same files as before it will (usually) be fine again for a while, so there does not appear to be anything within those specific files.

The diagnostics link reports that it will not run within a virtual environment, so I will only be able to obtain details for the customer with local devices, but if there is anything outside of this log wise that I can provide please let me know.

We’re hacing the same problems on the 2 machines running CC. Literally dozens of processes, every one needs to be manually ‘end task’ed before PDFs will open again. It’s really frustrating.

Hello. The same issue is occurring as for others. My OS is Windows 10 22H2.

We’ve been having the same issue for while now. Constantly having users report same issue where they cant open PDFs and killing the processes fixes. Our environment is Vmware (Omnissa) Horizon on Windows 2022 server. 
Are you also in a virtual environment? 

Hi ​@Willi32657786acfh  ​@davidjcullie  ​@Mantleloop 

Hope you all are doing well and thank you so much for your patience while we've been working with our engineering team to get to the bottom of it.
 

To help them investigate further, could you help us out with a few things the next time the issue happens?
• If you notice any pattern around when it occurs, a specific workflow, a particular type of PDF, or a certain action that seems to trigger it please let us know. 

• A screenshot of Task Manager showing the hanging Acrobat processes would be really helpful. If you can, please enable the 'Command line' column (right-click the column headers in the Details tab) so we can see exactly how each process was launched.

• Lastly, a memory dump of one of the stuck Acrobat processes would give engineering a lot to work with. You can create one by right-clicking the process in Task Manager and choosing 'Create dump file', then sharing the file with us.
 

Once we have these, our team will be able to dig deeper into the root cause.
 

Regards,
~Amal

Hi All,

Thank you for your patience. 

The team is currently investigating this behavior and requires the logs for further analysis. Please collect the logs by following the steps outlined in the help document linked here:: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-diagnostics.html.  Once you have collected the logs, please share the generated log ID with us. This will assist the team in identifying and reviewing the logs.

If you need any assistance, please don't hesitate to reach out.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

Yep, having this on multiple user computers and no fix. The worst part is that Adobe does not have any articles or any fix for this yet and have been going on for months now. We are just loading Foxit PDF for now, as users can’t work with adobe reader currently.

Hi Willi32657786acfh,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the trouble caused.

This is a wierd behaviour. Please confirm if you tried to reinstall the application once. If not, please try and see if that changes anyhting.

If the issue still occurs, please share some screenshots or video showing what happens. Additionally share the Acrobat Reader and OS verison currently in use. We will get this checked with the team.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

Yes we have experienced the same issue - contacted Adobe - Support took over my desktop for lengthy period..deleted various files..reinstalled Acrobat twice..reinstalled Creative Cloud..worked Ok for few days but now a few times per day PDF don't open..go to Task manger and close Adobe… No idea how to solve apart from reporting back to Adobe - sorry not very helpful