Acrobat Pro X freezes up for 10-15 seconds shortly after opening PDF

Good day folks,

Here is how I solved the issue for myself.

Background:

I have Adobe Acrobat Pro DC running on Windows 10 Pro (Enterprise) and I am connected to a corporate Network.  After starting Acrobat (whether with or without opening a Document) it would run for around 15 seconds apparently normally.  It would then hang / freeze / crash.  If I tried to click on anything more than a few times then Windows would report that Acrobat is "Not Responding".  It would recover on its own within around another 15 seconds.  This is a common complaint from what I can see.  I tried the following things without any success:

Things that didn't work:

Setting Recently Used Documents to only 1

Toggling Enhanced Security, Protected Views settings, etc.

Plug-Ins attempts:  Holding Shift when Acrobat starts keeps the problems from happening (but I need many of the Plug-Ins).

Graphics (Multimedia) Settings changes:  No effect for me.

Trying all kinds of permutations of settings in the Preferences settings had no effect for me.

My solution (works for me):

1)     Close down Acrobat. 

2)     Fire up regedit (follow the usually cautions for dealing with the Registry)

3)     Navigate to:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\2015\FeatureLockDown

4)     You should see Key folders with names like cDefaultExecMenuItems,                                             cDefaultFindAttachmentPerms, cDefaultLaunchAttachmentPerms, cDefaultLaunchURLPerms 

5)     If a key name named cServices does not yet exist, then create it (right click on FeatureLockDown and select New -> Key and             name it cServices). 

6)     Left Click to Select the cServices Key you just created. 

7)     Right click in the white space in the right side pane and select New -> DWORD (32-bit) Value and name this new           Value bToggleAdobeDocumentServices

8)     Double Click on the newly created bToggleAdobeDocumentServices and enter 1 (Hexadecimal) for the Value data.  Click OK. 

9)     Continue creating new Key names within the cServices Key folder until you have the following: 

               Name                                                       Type                         Data

               bToggleAdobeDocumentServices        REG_DWORD          0x00000001 (1)

               bToggleAdobeSign                                REG_DWORD          0x00000001 (1)

               bTogglePrefSync                                    REG_DWORD          0x00000001 (1)

               bUpdater                                                  REG_DWORD          0x00000000 (0)

          Note:  The value of bUpdater is 0 while the values of the first three are 1). 

          Note:  When you create the cServices Key folder a Key named (Default) may be automatically create, this is OK.  Just ignore it           (don't try to delete it). 

10.  Close the regedit, and restart Acrobat.  You may need to restart your PC. 

More Info: 

An explanation of these Registry fields can be found here: 

Services integration

I looked for this when I discovered that the problem had to do with one the Plug-Ins (as I mention above).  I traced it to IA32.api.  But, removing this Plug-In file crippled Acrobat in addition to keeping it from crashing.  Adobe Support tried to help me but they couldn't figure it out and I couldn't spend any more time with them.  These registry changes will stop Acrobat from going out to "the Cloud".  This keeps it from hanging while it tries to get through the corporate firewall.  My opinion is that it it very poor design and maybe insufficient testing that would cause this unresponsiveness to happen and go undetected.  I have been unable to find a non-registry way to get this result. 

Good luck! :-)

locks up before I can do any of these

Hi, I was actually searching for a solution to this problem for my Mac (2013 Mac Pro, 6x3.5ghz, 64 gb ram, 12 tb raid 0, all updates to Acrobat and OS X 10.9 - really should never have an issue with programs hanging) and tried SumitV's suggestions. Lo and behold, my recent documents list was set to 100 by default. Bringing that down to 10 has solved the issue. If your system is slower, taking it down to 5 or 1 may help.

Thanks SumitV!

This did not address the issue for me. Does Adobe have any plans to fix this issue or do we have to resort to another pdf program.

"Automatically trust sites from my Win os security zone"

This has helped alot.  I was entering a document and then after a few seconds it would freeze for 20-30 seconds and then come good, darn frustrating!  Turned off "Automatically trust sites from my Win OS security zone" now allows me to operate as normal.  Every once in a while a document would pause but I don't believe it is related to this issue.

Thanks for the suggestion.

My adobe pro constantly freezes it is unusable. on Widows 8.1.  always worked before upgrade.  Works on other machines without Windows *.  I tried uninstalling and reinstalling but no use.  It is awful. PDFs won't open from Outlook.  PDFs open otherwise but immediately freeze up. I can't even change preferences because preferences freezes. Something needs o be done.