My adobe is hanging up again again it shows the error code not responding.

Hi,

I am experiencing the same issue. I’ve triaged the issue with AI and here is the report:
 

Title: Acrobat 26.002.21931 — catastrophic thread/handle leak exhausts Windows
desktop heap, hard-freezes the OS (5 freezes in 2 days)

ENVIRONMENT
- Adobe Acrobat (64-bit) 26.002.21931  (the out-of-cycle hotfix dated 17 Sep 2026)
- Windows 11 Pro 25H2, build 26200 (shell modules 10.0.26100.9444)
- Intel i9-12900KF, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA RTX 3050
- Managed/enterprise install (Adobe FeatureLockDown policies present)

SUMMARY
Acrobat.exe leaks threads and handles without bound until it exhausts the
Session 1 desktop heap, which collapses the Windows shell and hard-freezes the
machine. Recovery requires holding the power button. This has happened 5 times
over two days. Acrobat was installed on 17 Sep and ran normally for ~4 days
before the first occurrence.

MEASURED DATA
I instrumented the machine with a 30-second resource sampler and captured the
onset. Acrobat goes from normal to pegging the per-process USER object limit
within a single 30-second interval:

  17:21:17   system: 10,102 threads    230,405 handles   top USER holder: explorer (467)
  17:21:47   system: 23,672 threads    317,770 handles   top USER holder: Acrobat (10,000)

It then climbs continuously and never releases:

  17:24:50      199,931 threads    1,538,190 handles
  17:35:39      424,147 threads    3,082,180 handles
  next morning  781,907 threads    5,591,227 handles   <- single Acrobat.exe process

Acrobat's USER object count sits at exactly 10,000 (the hard Windows
per-process limit) from onset onward. System process count falls from 422 to
~325 as other applications are starved of resources and die.

RESULTING FAILURE CHAIN
1. Win32k Event ID 704 — "A desktop heap allocation failed ... Session ID: 1"
   (fires against whichever process next requests heap: explorer.exe,
   chrome.exe, taskhostw.exe, RuntimeBroker)
2. Explorer.EXE crashes (faulting module CoreMessaging.dll or Windows.UI.Xaml.dll)
3. Winlogon Event 1002 — "The shell stopped unexpectedly and userinit.exe was restarted"
   in a loop
4. ctfmon.exe, TextInputHost.exe, SearchHost.exe crash (CoreMessaging.dll)
5. dwm.exe crashes — screen freezes completely
6. Kernel-Power Event 41 on next boot (no bugcheck, BugcheckCode = 0, no dump)

Notable secondary symptom: Ctrl+Alt+Del still works (Winlogon secure desktop has
its own heap) but Task Manager will not launch, and Win+L leaves an orphaned
LogonUI.exe. So the machine looks alive but cannot be recovered.

Acrobat also blocks clean shutdown — Winsrv Event 10001: "The following
application attempted to veto the shutdown: Acrobat.exe" — so an attempted
restart hangs and forces a hard power-off.

RULED OUT
No hardware fault: zero WHEA errors, zero disk/storage errors, zero GPU TDRs,
and no bugcheck of any kind. RAM and pagefile are healthy throughout (14+ GB
free). A Repair of the Acrobat installation made no difference (it reinstalls
the same build). 26.002.21931 is the newest available build, so there is no
forward update to apply.

QUESTIONS
1. Is this a known regression in 26.002.21931? The release notes describe it as
   an out-of-cycle hotfix addressing AI Assistant hangs — is the thread leak
   related to that subsystem?
2. Is the recommended workaround to roll back to 26.002.21901 (8 Sep planned
   release), and is that supported for managed deployments?
3. Is there a setting that disables the affected component in the meantime?

Whenever I open any pdf it just crashes after 1 min. I then cannot scroll up or down then I have to close the programme

Hello @realistic_Lightning4af0

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out. Sorry for the trouble with the freezing.

To help track this down, could you share a few more details?

Which Adobe application is this happening in (Acrobat, Acrobat Reader, or another app)?

What are you doing right when it freezes, for example, opening a specific PDF, saving, printing, or using a particular tool?

What operating system and version are you on (Windows 10, Windows 11, macOS, etc.)?

Does this happen with every file, or only certain ones?

Once we have those details, we can help narrow down what's causing it.

Regards,
Amal