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mike_0434
mike_0434
Participant
May 6, 2026
Question

Acrobat suddenly stops opening for one user

  • May 6, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 8 views

Hello - We have one user that is having an issue where Acrobat suddenly won’t open.  What I find when this happens is that there are anywhere from 10-15 instances of Acrobat.exe already running on her workstation.  She is able to open it again after I kill those.  My first suspicion was that she was opening PDFs throughout the day and leaving them open, so the running process count would build to where there were too many already running.  However, I found that that was not the case.  She would open or create PDFs throughout the day but would always close them after she was done with them.  I started monitoring this remotely, periodically checking to see how many instances of Acrobat.exe were running during the day.  Most of the time it was 0.  Occasionally it would be 1 or 2, maybe 3.  Then back to 0.  Suddenly, she would have this issue again and there would be 14 instances running.  I can’t find any cause for this, and she doesn’t seem to be doing anything out of the ordinary.  I even tried completely removing and reinstalling.  Anyone else see this issue?  Any ideas of what else to try?  She currently has Acrobat Standard DC version 2026.001.21529.

    1 reply

    Randy Hagan
    Community Expert
    Randy HaganCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 6, 2026

    Dirty question: is Acrobat installed on the system desktop? Is it being run through a virtual machine? Or through a network install?

     

    I’m hoping the answer is yes on the first, and no on the rest. But I’ve had client experiences where those kind of anomalies have resulted from running Acrobat independently from a location’s desktop and resident OS.

     

    Randy

    mike_0434
    mike_0434Author
    Participant
    May 6, 2026

    Hi Randy - Thanks for replying to this.  It is installed on the system desktop and is not a network install.  We are using virtual workstations, but they’re all individual single user VM’s, no multi-user scenarios.

    Randy Hagan
    Community Expert
    Randy HaganCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    May 6, 2026

    I’m assuming you’re running the VMs for systems security? Are there any anomalies in how your problem user’s VM is configured? 

     

    I ask this because I can’t open multiple instances of Acrobat Pro if it’s locally installed unless I have multiple versions of the software installed.

     

    When you’re talking about multiple instances of the Acrobat program running, it makes me think either there’s a ghost in the (virtual) machine — pun intended — or your remote monitoring may not be able to discern between multiple documents open in one instance and multiple instances of the program open. For what it’s worth, many remote monitoring setups have problems with this difference.

     

    I’m sure you’re woking in a busy office environment, and that my suggestion will inhibit that, but if you can call and ask your user to stop working when you see double-digits of Adobe Acrobat running on your remote monitor and check the system in person, you’ll get a good indication of which situation you’re dealing with.

     

    Hope this helps,

     

    Randy

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