Adobe Acrobat Freezing constantly.

[Rodney34355046q1uf]

Over the last few days, everytime I and a few other Adobe Acrobat users just open the app, it hangs and we need to wait for it to respond. Sometimes it works, but it is unpredictable. This was not an issue last week. I have updated to the newest version via updates yet it still happens. I paused virus scanning w/o any improvement. 

I also tried to disable enhanded security and protected mode, but that does not seem to help either.

Do you have any suggestions, this is quite annoying. 

[j.calo · Accepted solution]

Adding this setting to our environment (via a GPO) seemed to have resolved our slowness/freezing issues with Acrobat Pro. 

Edit>Preferences>Security enhanced>uncheck "Enable Protected Mode at startup".

A few years ago, we applied this setting to Adobe Reader using a group policy setting. Back then, Adobe Reader was exhibiting slowness and freezing when launching PDFs from one of the financial application that gets used across the enterprise. However, it seems that we never applied this same policy for Acrobat Pro. We noticed this on Thursday, and then updated our policy to include the same reg key for Acrobat Pro. 

These are the reg keys in question that configure the policy:

Path (for Reader): SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown
Path (for Acrobat Pro): SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown

Reg Value Type: DWORD
Reg Value Name: bProtectedMode
Reg Value Data: 0

I don't expect this to work for most folks in this thread since it seems that many have already tried, but I wanted to mention it anyways. 

[Jared35141547qmz3 · Accepted solution]

So was able to get the issue resolved after a couple of additional contacts with support. It involved:

- disabling "New Acrobat"

- in Add/Remove programs in Windows, repair any and ALL Microsoft Visual C++ reistributables that allow you, any that don't allow the repair simply remove

- run the Adobe Acrobat repair install

And that's pretty much it. Reboot the computer and it was good to go. Running as fast as it did before all the bugs started popping up. Hope this helps

[Gretchen33034268oyt2]

We are having the same problems across multiple users on both Pro and Standard. 

[Fbc]

Same problem here on both computers with Acrobat lastest version.
Uncheking "Enable Protected Mode at startup" seems to work for us.

[terrexaccounting]

Me too.  I can hardly work with it.  It is sooo slow and keeps freezing.

[gnomedog]

I checked late yesterday and they have a un update patch available.  I don't know why they didn't send out a notification, but ......

Note - I had to close everything down and do a manual download and installation because it wouldn't update with any of the Adobe services running, and trying to update from within the Adobe program keeps them running. 

It is better than it was, but still lagging sometimes. Worth installing IMO.

[gnomedog]

Well, the update patch seemed to help for one day, now it's worse than before.  Freezes and crashes every time I I open or try click on a page inside a doc, or close it. So frustrating. Why can't they fix this? Roll back to a working version if necessary.  Had to diable Projected Mode at Startup to use it at all, and this requires extra steps to rename files when I extract.   pages.

[gnomedog]

And now it keeps popping up and asking me to activate.  This has become a huge issue for our small company. 

[JenChapDE]

I am also having this issue and we pay for the pro version....ugh its so frustrating!

[Jared35141547qmz3]

I am also experiencing this issue. I've tried the disabling protected mode and the other fixes, none of have worked. 99% of the plans I open cause Acrobat to freeze almost instantly making it unusable. I pay for Acrobat Pro. This has been going on for a month or two, but now it is just simply garbage. Need a fix to this immediately

[Ward47]

It sounds like the symptoms vary a little, but for the case of always freezing a few seconds after opening a PDF, one of the solutions offered here on Dec. 21 worked for me: Open Acrobat > Menu > Disable new Acrobat.

[Jared35141547qmz3]

I did try this and it has not resolved my issues unfortunately

[Ward47]

Too bad. The bug might manifest differently in the Pro version, which I am not using. Or there are multiple bugs with similar symptoms.

[Jared35141547qmz3 · Accepted solution]

So was able to get the issue resolved after a couple of additional contacts with support. It involved:

- disabling "New Acrobat"

- in Add/Remove programs in Windows, repair any and ALL Microsoft Visual C++ reistributables that allow you, any that don't allow the repair simply remove

- run the Adobe Acrobat repair install

And that's pretty much it. Reboot the computer and it was good to go. Running as fast as it did before all the bugs started popping up. Hope this helps

[Valentina32136038h1j6]

How do you disable "New Acrobat"?

[Valentina32136038h1j6]

This worked! Thank you.

[reid_6446]

this worked. already had uninstalled acrobat before addressing item 2.

[Normal35411105ktht]

Same. Since some massive update, it simply brings up a box with a circle & just sits there. Triggered by rolling over the close tools 'X' , which covers half the screen on startup, or accessing the help option in main menu.

I don't like acrobat DC; always been slow, 1 min per document to spool to printer, and something called 'acroCEF' causes huge software interrupts.  , but windows prevents installing an older version.

Only good thing since that update: (if it doesn't freeze) can print 15 documents in 2 minutes.

[Amal.]

Hi there

What is the version of the Acrobat DC you are using? To check the version go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure you have the recent version 23.08.20470 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also try to repair the installation from the help menu (Win Only) and see if that works.

~Amal

[WHough]

Acknowledging that j.calo and Jared35141547qmz3 have supplied very helpful resolutions, I may just have a third possible cause (and resolution) of this issue that I feel I should share. If anything, the resolution coincided too closely with the disappearance of the issue to be, in my opinion, merely coincidental.

In running both Acrobat Reader and Acrobat Pro (32-bit) in the last 10 days (before date of this posting), within 30 seconds or less of startup, a small centered white window would pop up, with a blue circle on 'spin cycle' (as with any slow-moving Windows app). After two or three seconds, the blue circle would freeze, as would the Acrobat app itself. And while the only way I could find to shut down Acrobat without rebooting Windows was to use Task Manager (CTRL-ALT-DEL), I noticed that the message "Not Responding" did not display in TM.

In any case, I was not all that motivated to seek a resolution to the issue due to free-time constraints and the fact that I had a hardcopy of the PDF in question at my disposal.

Today (about an hour ago), I updated my antivirus software - I happen to employ AVG - to include a subscription for blocking trackers and unasked-for browser cookies. Usually I go in and rid myself of these annoyances manually, but it was becoming irksome. Once I installed the tracker and cookie blocking app, the anomaly with Acrobat went away. I have had both Reader and Acrobat Pro up and running (and still running) since installation, and the issue has not recurred. 

For the record I am running Windows 10 v22H2 (x64) and am employing AVG with TuneUp, AntiTrack, and SecureVPN. You might try updating your own antivirus software to include tracker and cookie blocker features (if you haven't already) if the issue regarding Acrobat freeze continues to be an issue for you.

[GermiOut]

https://www.germiout.com/

[johhnyd68650275 · Accepted solution]

Hi all! In case my experience could help anyone:

I also got this "white square" with "spinning circle" which made Adobe Acrobat Reader DC hang/freeze. But, here we are talking about the application beeing published in an on-prem Citrix site, as a "seamless application", and also using the 32-bit Norwegian version, running on Windows Server 2019. In addition, it's packaged as an AppV-application, not locally installed. Nevertheless we have been running this setup for quite some time, and only this last week (from after April 1st) the issue has occured. 

What seems to fix it in our case is adding the following registry setting via GP Preferences:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockdown

Value: bWhatsNewExp

Data: 0x1 (DWORD)

From Adobe: 

This feature was phased in incrementally over 2022. When enabled, the default user on first launch will see a What's New screen as well as a See new features notication. These UI items appear once. Possible values include:

• 0: Enable the What's New experience.
• 1: Disable.

So, after disabling it (= setting the value to 1) the problem disappeared!

[MaxQuordlepleen]

Acrobat crashes immediately for me regardless of whether I just open the app or by attempting to open a PDF. Thus, I do not even have the opportunity to try to disable "New Acrobat" in the menu as some have suggested, as it crashes before I can even reach the menu. I do get a white square without any content for a few tenths of a second before the program crashes, but prior to that I can browse any PDF for about half a second without a problem. I have deinstalled and reinstalled, and also tried to repair Acrobat (Win 11), but nothing helped. I can open all the same files with a simple PDF viewer such as Chrome without a hitch.

[Nick Avallone]

Anyone have solutions for a Mac? I've already downgraded Acrobat, turned off Security and Security (Enhanced).

There are very few files I can open at this point. I've got a 32 MB file that just flashes blank white boxes while the pinwheel cursor spins endlessly. It's still doing this dance, and I opened the file five minutes ago. 

It's hard to believe anyone can actually use this software in a professional environment anymore. 

Mac Studio 2023
Apple M2 Max

64 GB RAM/ 100 GB free storage space

[Cheryl386005023rps]

Mine keeps freezing every 5 seconds. It is taking me hours to do a small job

 THIS IS FRUSTRATING!!!!

[Amal.]

Hi there

Have you started experiencing this issue recently after the update, or was this issue present earlier as well?

What is the version of the OS and the Acrobat DC you are using? To check the version go to Help > About Acrobat and make sure you have the recent version 24.02.2089x installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Please collect the crash/freeze logs https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/collect-logs-crash-freeze.html and share them via any cloud storage. Just upload the log file to the cloud and generate the link and share that link with us for further investigation

~Amal

[janetr63454133]

me too, i cannot seem to get further than a few pages in a PDF. I tried the suggestions here but they did not work