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Rodney34355046q1uf
Participant
Dec 19, 2023 3:29 PM UTC
Answered

Adobe Acrobat Freezing constantly.

Over the last few days, everytime I and a few other Adobe Acrobat users just open the app, it hangs and we need to wait for it to respond. Sometimes it works, but it is unpredictable. This was not an issue last week. I have updated to the newest version via updates yet it still happens. I paused virus scanning w/o any improvement. 

 

I also tried to disable enhanded security and protected mode, but that does not seem to help either.

 

Do you have any suggestions, this is quite annoying. 

    johhnyd68650275
    johhnyd68650275Correct answer
    Participant
    Apr 3, 2024 10:21 AM UTC

    Hi all! In case my experience could help anyone:

    I also got this "white square" with "spinning circle" which made Adobe Acrobat Reader DC hang/freeze. But, here we are talking about the application beeing published in an on-prem Citrix site, as a "seamless application", and also using the 32-bit Norwegian version, running on Windows Server 2019. In addition, it's packaged as an AppV-application, not locally installed. Nevertheless we have been running this setup for quite some time, and only this last week (from after April 1st) the issue has occured. 

    What seems to fix it in our case is adding the following registry setting via GP Preferences:

    Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockdown

    Value: bWhatsNewExp

    Data: 0x1 (DWORD)

     

    From Adobe: 

    This feature was phased in incrementally over 2022. When enabled, the default user on first launch will see a What's New screen as well as a See new features notication. These UI items appear once. Possible values include:
    • 0: Enable the What's New experience.
    • 1: Disable.

     

    So, after disabling it (= setting the value to 1) the problem disappeared!

     

    View reply

    142 replies

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    Bailey34552160n04k
    Participant
    Jan 2, 2024 6:07 PM UTC

    Happening to us too.  Adding this in hopes that they'll put in a patch with the next update...

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      Brent27625313cta3
      Participant
      Jan 2, 2024 10:25 PM UTC

      Also happening to us, several users within the org are having this issue.  The only thing that has worked has been disabling Protected Mode at startup.  So here we are disabling a security feature to get Adobe Acrobat working correctly...  Not a fan!  We have rebuilt and completely reinstalled Windows on certain machine and the issue still rears its head.  How is this an issue on completely fresh Windows OS & Adobe Acrobat installs?

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        gnomedog
        Participating Frequently
        Jan 2, 2024 5:34 PM UTC

        Acrobat crashing sometimes, very slow when it does work, hanging and having to close it in Task Manager and restart.  I live in Acrobat all day to process bills, pulling pages out of the docs, and this is seriously affecting my productivity.  I've uninstalled, reinstalled, run the repair numerous times, tried every suggestion offered here and still isn't working. Please get this fixed!

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          Amal.
          Amal.
          Legend
          Dec 22, 2023 6:17 PM UTC

          Hi All

           

          Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out.

           

          Would you mind collecting the Crash/freeze logs https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/collect-logs-crash-freeze.html and share them via any cloud storage. Just upload the log file to the cloud and generate the link and share that link with us for further investigation.

           

          Regards

          Amal

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          MatsGunnarsson
          Participant
          Dec 22, 2023 4:44 PM UTC

          Don't remember where I found this bu it helped for me. My Acrobat have been freezing and crashing for about a week now. These steps fixed it for me.

           

          1. Edit>Preferences>General>uncheck "Show online storage when saving files"
          2. Edit>Preferences>Security enhanced>uncheck "Enable Protected Mode at startup".
          Restart Acrobat.

           

          If that doesn't work.
          Help>Repair installation

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            networka45947651
            Participant
            Dec 22, 2023 4:25 PM UTC

            We're having the same issues. 3 of our users have reported the freezing already. Any permanent fix???

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            networka45947651
            Participant
            Dec 22, 2023 4:42 PM UTC

            Happening on v 23.006.20380

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            michaeld41589159
            Participant
            Dec 21, 2023 7:09 PM UTC

            Can confirm we are having these issues across the board on every CC installation. Adobe Reader is freezing up at load or closing and often cannot open multiple PDFs without crashing. The problem is spilling over to peripheral apps like Illustrator and Photoshop. I have seen improvement after disabling new Acrobat, turning off Enhanced Security, and running a repair.

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              michaeld41589159
              Participant
              Dec 21, 2023 7:11 PM UTC

              correction - meant on Acrobat Standard (not Reader)

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                tobym
                Inspiring
                Dec 21, 2023 4:24 PM UTC

                I have the same, or similar - soon after opening Acrobat some sort of dialogue half loads, with a spinner, and Acrobat never recovers. This is on Windows 11 and it's really frustrating.

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                  gspice1980
                  Participant
                  Dec 22, 2023 6:47 AM UTC

                  Hi @tobym, I have seen this issue as well.  On mine it was caused by a signature issue, however it was possible to clear the dialougue by pressing the esc key and I could then get back into acrobat.

                   

                  The difference was that I only saw the"spinning box" come up when I tried certify a document, so it may not be the same issue.

                   

                  For the amount of money we pay per user per month for acrobat, some of the bugs that seem to go unfixed is bad.

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                  gspice1980
                  Participant
                  Dec 21, 2023 4:05 PM UTC

                  I am also haing this issue, I have Acobat Pro on two seprate PCs, both on Win 11 fully updated.  As of this week, everytime I open a docuemnt in Adobe, it freezes/hangs for 5-20 seconds, norally when the docuemtn is first opened.  Once it clears then normal operation resumes for a while.

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                    joela19740897
                    joela19740897
                    Participant
                    Dec 21, 2023 3:26 PM UTC

                    Finally got an answer on this one - there's a glitch in the most recent Adobe update that causes conflicts with security applications. You can follow these steps to correct: 

                     

                    1. Open Acrobat > Menu > Disable new Acrobat.
                    2. Edit > Preferences or (Ctrl+k) > in the Categories:
                      • General > Uncheck show me messages when I launch Acrobat
                      • Accessibility > Uncheck "Enable assistive technology support"
                      • Reading > Pages vs Documents > Do not read documents
                      • Search > Maximum Cache: 100000 MB then Purge Cache Content
                      • Security > Uncheck "Use SafeLogic"
                      • Security Enhanced > Uncheck "Enable Protected Mode" and Enable Enhance Security
                    3. Close Acrobat and Open run from the start menu of Windows > type "temp" and clear all the content that can be deleted
                    4. Open run from the start menu of Windows > type "%temp%" and clear all the content that can be deleted
                    5. Open run from the start menu of Windows > type "prefetch" and clear all the content that can be deleted

                     

                    Hopefully they'll roll out a patch to correct across the board as this is not going to be fun rolling out across fifty users.

                     

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                      defaultm8d7zxwov1yn
                      Participant
                      Dec 21, 2023 3:43 PM UTC

                      Thanks for posting this--do you know how critical steps 3-5 are? It seems like that could cause issues with non-Adobe applications that rely on temp folders and I'm not excited about introducing new issues.

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                        Paula34686589y6nm
                        Participant
                        Jan 9, 2024 5:05 PM UTC

                        Did you test with just steps 1 - 2?    I

                         

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                        defaultm8d7zxwov1yn
                        Participant
                        Dec 21, 2023 3:21 PM UTC

                        Chiming in with another report of the same issue. We're a small shop (just 30 licensed Pro users) but 2 have reported it in the last 24 hours, and I'm sure more will come out of the woodwork. All on version 23.008.2042x 

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