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Jerry3088215125bf
Jerry3088215125bf
Participant
April 16, 2026
Answered

Painfully slow opening Acrobat or any pdf... i7, 64gb ram

  • April 16, 2026
  • 1 reply
  • 128 views

I have a relatively quick computer, i7 64gb ram, and OMG just opening Acrobat, or any sized documents takes forever… :30 seconds minimum. 6-12 months ago they opened instantly. 

This is painful. I literally forget what I was looking for in reports by the time these documents open up. 

I uninstalled and reinstalled (Continuous Release 2026 001 21431). Dell XPS 9510 64gb, 2x1TB SSDs, Windows 11 Pro Insider Program (which I predict will be said to be the problem) all updated. I ran the repair and it took at least 15 minutes? The ‘Please wait while Windows configures Adobe Acrobat’ ‘Gathering Required Information’ took :30 minutes! 

It seems, that over the last year, ever since Acrobat started heavily integrating AI into Acrobat, performance nosedived. Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve disabled any AI functions (preferences/Generative AI - unchecked all) largely because I have been having this slowness issue… which got much worse after reinstalling this time around.

Is there an older version (2024 would be fine with me) that we can reliably run? 

I can’t work like this. And, like everyone on the planet, it’s not as if there is any competition to consider. Heck, I never thought of competition until the last year. I can live with the hugely sub-par OCR and data extraction. Nowadays I just let Claude/ChatGPT figure it out… but, neither of those will speed up Acrobat running on my notebook (sadly). 

Any help or insight appreciated!

    Correct answer Meenakshi0101

    Hi Jerry3088215125bf,

     

    Thank you for reaching out, and sorry to hear about your experience.

     

    Please try the troubleshooting steps suggested below:

    • Open Acrobat 
    • Go to Menu > Preferences > Security (Enhanced)
    • Under “Sandbox Protections”, temporarily:
      • Uncheck Enable Protected Mode at startup
      • Uncheck Run in AppContainer (if present)
      • (Optionally) uncheck Enable Enhanced Security for testing only
         

    NOTE: Disabling Protected Mode/AppContainer reduces protection against malicious PDFs. Use this only to confirm the cause, and re-enable once we isolate the cause.

     

    You may try resetting the Acrobat preferences. Please refer to the steps suggested here: https://community.adobe.com/questions-9/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-default-1238720

     

    If the above steps do not help, we suggest reinstalling the application once. Standard uninstall/reinstall sometimes leaves behind broken installer state, registry entries, or cached components, which can lead to the very long “Gathering required information / configuring” loops.

    Try to reinstall using the steps suggested below:

    -Remove the application and run the cleaner tool (https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Labs/cleaner.html).
    -Reboot the machine. 
    -Install Adobe Acrobat from the following page: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-dc-downloads.html. 

     

    Let us know how it goes.

     

    Thanks,

    Meenakshi

    1 reply

    Meenakshi0101
    Community Manager
    Meenakshi0101Community ManagerCorrect answer
    Community Manager
    April 20, 2026

    Hi Jerry3088215125bf,

     

    Thank you for reaching out, and sorry to hear about your experience.

     

    Please try the troubleshooting steps suggested below:

    • Open Acrobat 
    • Go to Menu > Preferences > Security (Enhanced)
    • Under “Sandbox Protections”, temporarily:
      • Uncheck Enable Protected Mode at startup
      • Uncheck Run in AppContainer (if present)
      • (Optionally) uncheck Enable Enhanced Security for testing only
         

    NOTE: Disabling Protected Mode/AppContainer reduces protection against malicious PDFs. Use this only to confirm the cause, and re-enable once we isolate the cause.

     

    You may try resetting the Acrobat preferences. Please refer to the steps suggested here: https://community.adobe.com/questions-9/how-to-reset-acrobat-preference-settings-to-default-1238720

     

    If the above steps do not help, we suggest reinstalling the application once. Standard uninstall/reinstall sometimes leaves behind broken installer state, registry entries, or cached components, which can lead to the very long “Gathering required information / configuring” loops.

    Try to reinstall using the steps suggested below:

    -Remove the application and run the cleaner tool (https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Labs/cleaner.html).
    -Reboot the machine. 
    -Install Adobe Acrobat from the following page: https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/acrobat-dc-downloads.html. 

     

    Let us know how it goes.

     

    Thanks,

    Meenakshi

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