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Participant
November 8, 2012
Answered

Acrobat XI Pro "Not Responding

  • November 8, 2012
  • 5 replies
  • 43102 views

I recently updated to Windows 8 Professional and Acrobat worked like a charm for 3 days with instantaneous reponse.

Now progressively I am back to the old problem that I had under Windows 7 and with Acrobat X and 9 - Whenever I open a new PDF it takes an extraordinary amount of time to open and I usually get the message "not responding" with an opaque window.

We have had this problem on 2 PC's.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer BrianGWright

With the newer versions of Windows, many folks are just letting Windows Defender to the job that is part of Windows. On my XP machine at home, I use Avast. Sometimes the updates for Avast get annoying in slowing down my system. Many folks are starting to go away from Norton or Symantec. The Symantec antivirus is very complete, but seems to be a major slow-down product. With the way anti-virus works, you are really talking about a trade-off between speed and "complete" coverage. You might just try turning off the anti-virus temporarily and seeing if that is indeed the issue.

I was have problems as I mentioned with a CAD package and just started killing tasks (with the task list from the safe mode as a guide of what to definitely not kill) and found the problem went away. Unfortunately, I have not had time to go back and find which program was a problem.

It might help if you can identify what has been installed about the time you started having an issue. I assume you probably installed something as is normal as you load your new computer.


Thankyou for all the advice.

The issue seems to have been the number of fonts that I had in the Font Folder.

I installed a Font Manager and moved a large number of fonts to a managed folder and it seems to have solved the problem.

It makes sense when I think about it.

Again, thankyou everyone for your advice.

Brian

5 replies

Participant
September 1, 2015

Same issue for MONTHS now and even rebooting doesn't solve it for more than a few minutes? WHAT THE HELL? I am a doctor and if I cared for my patients the way Adobe fixes known issues, I'd kill half my patients!

Participant
October 28, 2015

I made a big mistake and updated.    Not responding constant causing me a lot of lost time.   

Participant
August 28, 2015

Same issue.   Stopping print spooling and redoing font manager has made no difference.   I simply click on Acrobat Pro and nothing happens.   I can't open any of my previous PDF's.    I get around it using an online program, although frustrating to say the least-

Participant
January 24, 2013

Brian, Hopefully you will see this reply.  What do you mean by the use of a font manager and moving the large number of fonts.  I have Adobe Type Manager installed on several PC's and I experience the same issue.  Can you explain?

Participant
January 24, 2013

No worries.

It took me a long time work out what the problem was (after re-installing software, rebuilding the pc's etc, hours on forums etc) but in the end coincidentally I installed FontExplore X Pro on the 2 PC's affected. We had over 9,000 fonts in the Fonts folder. FontExplorer went through and deactivated the vast majority of these and performance improved immediately.

Being deactivated is not a problem as there is a Font Explorer plug in for Creative Suite.

I hope that this helps

Brian

Participant
April 28, 2015

I agree with you, restarting the print spooler tends to work for me to get Acrobat working again about 50% of the time. Unfortunately for me, tonight is not in that percentage range.

Ironically the reason I always have to turn the print spooler back off is because when it is on, Adobe Illustrator gives me the "not responding" treatment!

The amount of time I spend troubleshooting my Adobe programs is oftentimes greater than the time I actually get to spend using them for their intended purpose!

Very, very, very frustrating! And yes, I have followed all of the tech advice etc., and the things still glitch up. I'm a student now, but I can't even imagine having to

cope with these problems after I graduate and begin my career in the working world!

Adobe, if you are listening: Please fix the bugs in your programs! My schoolwork is suffering because of them; which also means my health is suffering because I don't get any sleep since

I am having to spend so many hours fighting to get anything to work! (Illustrator, Acrobat, InDesign, Photoshop, Flash, etc., etc., etc.!) Also it is costing me grade points since my work has been

late at times due to these bugs. Tonight is a prime example, which is why I am here in this forum trying to find a way to fix Acrobat so I can make a simple PDF (since none of the other applications will work, either!).

Paying too much for too little. Very dissatisfied customer. /Rant.


I keep having the same issue and i agree with Rant, this shouldn't be happening in a package that i am paying for!

Participant
December 12, 2012

I have had the same ongoing problem with Acrobat X Pro "Not Responding" on a continuous basis, particularly on software launch with the first document opened. If I launch the application from a document by double-clicking, the error is almost immediate. Windows 8 Intel Core i7 and prior Windows 7 Intel Core i5. Its not specific to any particular PDF, and purge cache contents certainly makes no sense on my new Windows 8 machine that has a fresh install and has been running less than a week.

Inspiring
December 13, 2012

Since it started being slow and this is a new installation, have you installed anything else just before the problem showed up? Since it is also an issue on two other machines, but things had been fine, it sure sounds like some software that you have installed or activated that is causing a conflict. I had a slow down recently that was causing a CAD package to take almost a 1/2 minute between major step in a simulation, something that normally would be about 2 seconds. I killed almost every task that appeared to not be needed (you can always look at the task list when you open in safe mode to determine the minumum needed to run Windows) and the program runs like a charm. I think I have identified the culprit, but not sure yet. I did deactivate a few programs and that seems to have done the trick.

A quick test is to open in safe mode and try Acrobat there. If it runs fine, you likely have some other program (maybe anti-virus or such) that is causing the problem. If you do not remember what was installed, there may be something in the Windows log to help.

Participant
December 13, 2012

Bill, that seems to make a great deal of sense. Since I've had the same problem on two different computers using two different anti-virus softwares, can you shortcut my trial and error by telling me which anti-virus has worked with Acrobat for you?

This has also generated an error I spotted on another Adobe forum post where Word now has the same "non-responding" launch message (after the message has appeared in Acrobat). So, the initial Acrobat error seems to impact other applications.

I would gladly change one anti-virus for another, but my Adobe products are irreplaceable. Thx Wendy

Rave
Participating Frequently
November 8, 2012

Is it specific to some pdf's or any pdf's?

Try repairing Acrobat.

November 15, 2012

You can also try cleaning up your temporary files and purging your search Cache.

Launch Acrobat , Go to Edit- > Preferences -> Search. There will be a button which says "Purge Cache contents". Click on this button.

Ideally you should not face any performance issue because of Acrobat as such. It can be due to some heavy PDF which you have opened or the activities which your OS is performing in the background

normanr61204440
Participating Frequently
January 4, 2024

Thank you. This works perfectly. I have many files on Acrobat Pro and this was a constant problem.