I am also experiencing the issue many users are: Acrobat will not launch until all running Acrobat processes are ended in task manager

Forum|Forum|20 days ago
June 30, 2026
4 replies
233 views

I am an IT support technician, and I have two users who are both experiencing this issue. Acrobat seems to refuse to launch, but further inspection shows that there are actually Acrobat processes launching, in the background, and they must all be closed (end task) before the app will actually launch. The user I am working with is on version 2026.001.21691 (windows 11 25H2) which is the most up to date version we are allowed to install per our environment’s rules.
I actually ended up reimaging the laptop and installing a fresh copy of windows 11, last week, as I had run out of troubleshooting options (reinstall app, update app to latest available version in our environment, create new windows profile, changed a bunch of settings with the app that i found online)
The reimage seemed to fix it for several days, but we’re back to square one again. The only workaround is to have the user end the tasks in task manager, which they are doing, many, many times a day, as their main job function is opening and editing PDFs in Acrobat. I also just tried turning on windows 8 compatibility mode for Acrobat, which was the answer from another similar thread on this forum.
I am kind of at a loss, and have no idea what to try next. Any help would be appreciated.

JR Boulay

Community Expert

This is a known bug; this answer might be of some help:

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

C

cdewey711Author

Participant

Thank you for the reply, but we are ultimately no closer to a resolution. I actually went beyond what these steps recommend, and reimaged the laptop entirely, after uninstalling/running acrocleaner didn’t resolve the issue.
Still just waiting on a response from Adobe themselves.

JR Boulay

Community Expert

Be patient!!!

🤐

Acrobate du PDF, InDesigner et Photoshopographe

S

Sam Parkinson

Participant

Also a support technician/engineer, we are having multiple clients with the same issue. Restart resolves the issue temporarily, otherwise we need to end the Adobe processes in Task Manager.

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Evelyn3805249584fe

Participant

I am having the same issue. It is maddening. I tried fixes that I found online but none have worked.

Amal Jaiswal

Community Manager

Hi @cdewey711

Hope you are doing well and thanks for reaching out. We have reported this issue to our engneering team for review. We will share update as soon as we get more information from them.

Thanks for your understanding

~Amal