Clear Print Jobs in Windows Registry in Acrobat Distiller\PrinterJob Control

I think your concern is misplaced. Of course you can delete these entries and see whether it magically makes your PC faster; my advice would be to export this part of the registry so you can put it back if anything is broken, which is a real possibility.

Registry bloat, if it is a real thing at all rather than an invention of the people who try to sell us junk tools, is not just about how big the registry is, or how many keys. The registry is designed to work efficiently at very large sizes. Any effect comes from things in the registry that make things happen (like, run an EXE at startup time, or a DLL when you click).  Far more damage comes I feel from running clean up tools, which I would not let near my computer, ever, and which are often free and have questionable motives.

When I originally posted my question, I mistakenly thought there were about 60 References to PDF files in the Windows 8.1 Registry's HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\Acrobat Distiller\PrinterJobControl key.

I just went into the Registry to  count how many there actually were listed there. If I counted correctly, there are 570 listings for PDF files created by Acrobat Distiller, that referenced files that were supposed to be in the Documents Folder. Many of these files no longer exist on my PC as they've been burned to a DVD disk. Others were moved to another folder because I might have saved them to the wrong place, but were still listed as being in the original file location..

My PC is starting up from a boot very slow, perhaps because of Registry bloat.

Last week, when the Upgrade to Windows 10 was still free, I tried upgrading and and the installation failed 5 times. A Microsoft Assurant tech was working with me thru 4 of the 5 failed upgrade installs. There might just be too much bloat in my registry. For many years, I used Auslogics Boostspeed to clean up the Windows Registry. The last time I purchased the product via their reseller, they offered me a free scan of my PC and told me that I had a nasty virus on my PC that would have to be removed at a cost of about $400. Not only did I complain to the parent company and to a host of consumer agencies, I uninstalled the software and finally got a refund. I contacted Trend Micro which is the company that provides my security software, and their Premium Support tech ran all manner of tests over a period of several hours to identify and eliminate the virus. No virus was found.

CCleaner Pro has a registry module that lists potential problems. It doesn't look at the Acrobat Distiller key, unless the key was either faulty or obsolete.

Since Acrobat Distiller leaves crumbs in the Windows Registry for files created by the Adobe PDF printer, I now have to resort to using Omnipage Ultimate's Scansoft PDF to convert Web Pages, and E-mails to PDF. Scansoft PDF doesn't leave any crumbs in the Windows Registry. I just have to make sure that I reduce the file size in Acrobat DC Pro after I open the file.

I feel your concern is misplaced. This is insignificant. Tidy is good, but it is easy to do more harm than good. If somftware does something, my advice is to leave it until it becomes an actual problem, rather than looking untidy.

I can see value in a list of recent work. Recent lists are NOT cleared up when files are removed or moved; the cost would be enormous.

Hi bubbie021 ,

I would like to mention that this behavior is by design.

Could you please tell why do you want to delete these entries in registry?

Thank You!

Shivam