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

[ajkessel]

Transferring this discussion from another forum.

I believe my issue may be the same as or similar to http://forums.adobe.com/thread/867133 , but I'm not able to post to that forum.

Running Acrobat 10.1.2 on a fully-patched Windows 7/64 Bit system (Office 2010/32 bit). Antivirus is eSet NOD32 4.0.437.0. I've been having this problem for several versions of Acrobat Pro.

Frequently, when I open a PDF, Acrobat shows the document and is responsive to user action (e.g. scrolling) for a few seconds, and then becomes completely unresponsive for 10-15 seconds, and then is usable again. This happens fairly consistently. Even if I already have Acrobat open, opening a new file causes the same behavior.

Many of the comments on this sort of problem suggest security settings might be an issue.I have tried disabling Enhanced security, disabling "automatically trust sites from my Win OS security zones", disabling "verify signatures when the document is opened", disabling "load security settings from a server", also done "clear remembered account information" for LiveCycle Rights Management. Further disabled everything in advanced settings under Windows Integration. None of these changes have any effect on my problem.

Any suggestions for how to troubleshoot?

[brienarnold]

locks up before I can do any of these

[brienarnold]

with no pdf open, just on documents screen

[Guest]

Same issue. I don't know why but when I start task manager before opening pdf file it runs smoothly.

[Knote]

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! 🙂

[kaomoo69]

Bro

just want to put it out there that you totally solved my problem on Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Big Thanks!

[stanz7954841]

Knote's registry solution is already 2.5 years old. And I'm concerned about making any "fixes" for the freezing problem by editing the registry.

Plus, even if his solution still works (does anyone know?), this comment he made is concerning to me:

... 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...

So does that mean those of us behind a firewall will not be able to update Acrobat through the Adobe Creative Cloud updater? Are we potentially trading one problem for another?

[SixdaysNL]

I'm having this freezing issue already for a long time, always when I have a slow connection or in this case behind a corporate firewall. Pretty awkward that this isn't fixed after 7 years Adobe. I don't see why this offline program needs to connect.