Adobe Acrobat Not Responding/Freezing

[issaacr]

Good afternoon,

There seems to be an issue after the latest update (25.001.20577) with Adobe Acrobat not responding. Sometimes Acrobat will freeze and we'll need to use task manager to close it out. Most of the time there's a long delay and Acrobat displays "Not responding" but will eventually load.

We've attempted to resolve this by running a repair. When this didn't work, we tried using Adobe Cleaner tools to remove Adobe and reinstalled from Creative Cloud.

I've seen posts from past years with a similar issue. I've tried everything suggested in those posts including turning off online storage options, disabling protected view, and disabling new acrobat.

Please advise. This is greatly affecting many of our user's workflows.

[S. S]

Hi @issaacr,

Hope you are doing well. Sorry for your experience with Acrobat Pro DC.

Do the users see this when trying to open a file? Can you let us know if the situation is the same when the app is opened, simply by double-clicking the app icon?

Also, please help us gather logs from your machine: https://adobe.ly/4l1gBRA. Please make sure Procmon is selected. You can upload logs using this tool and share your Unique log ID with us. 

Look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
Souvik.

[issaacr]

Hi Souvik. This issue occurs when opening files. The app itself seems to be opening just fine.

[S. S]

Hi @issaacr,

Thanks for the clarification.

Would you mind trying the steps below:

Go to Preferences > Security (enhanced) > disable protected mode > relaunch Acrobat > then try again.

If this doesn't work, please generate logs from your system and share the log ID with us for further investigation.

Regards,
Souvik.

[issaacr]

Protected View is already disabled. We have a policy set up that disables this settings for all users.

[issaacr]

Souvik, are older versions of Acrobat available somewhere online for download or is it possible to roll back to a previous version? I've attempted to install a previous version through Creative Cloud but don't see that as an option for Acrobat

[Ethan39008362himt]

Have there been any definite solutions to get it to stop doing this yet?

[issaacr]

Souvik, do you or anyone else have any other suggestions besides turning off protected view, disabling online storage options, or repairing/reinstalling? I've already spent hours browsing through Adobe forums looking for a fix and nothing suggested seems to be working. Is it possible to escalate this issue?

[S. S]

Hi @issaacr,

Thanks for the response.

Have you tried going to Home > Preferences > Documents > lowering the number for "Show Documents in Recent List" to anything 10 or below? 

This should lower the load on Acrobat, trying to show the entire list of documents in the home screen.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,
Souvik.

[issaacr]

Yes, lowering the number of documents in the recent list has been tried.

[adrienne_3408]

Hey, I appreciate this thread. This issue is incredibly frustrating. I pay $30/month just to read pdfs. I don't think it should be this complicated. Yet, my adobe acrobat consistently goes gray into "not responding" mode, just when I'm trying to scroll through the document. It wastes a ton of time as I'm trying to gather information from documents to get my work done. It is really clunky. Scrolling through a pdf should not be this hard. Thanks for trying to gather information and address this problem. 

[S. S]

Hi @adrienne_3408,

Hope you are doing well. 

We are live with a new update (25.1.20982) which has multiple performance and stability enhancements 

Would you mind updating the app to the latest version and letting us know if it works for you?

To do so, go to Menu > Help > Check for Updates.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,
Souvik.

[issaacr · Accepted solution]

I ended up opening a ticket with Adobe Support. The below steps seems to have resolved the issue for one PC so far.

Greetings from Adobe.

Hope this email finds you well. We are thankful that you chose Adobe Acrobat.

We appreciate your cooperation. This Email is regarding the open case that we have, and we want to make sure your issue has been taken care of to our best and as per your satisfaction.

Below are the steps to remove Adobe from your computer.
>>Open the Control Panel and navigate to Programs and Features.
>>Select Acrobat Installation and click uninstall (repeat this step if there is more than one installation). Note: Continue to uninstall even if the app prompts a security alert.
>>Navigate to to Windows folder (C:/ drive)
>>Open Program Files and delete Adobe Folders. Open the 'Common Files' folder. Repeat the same step for the Program Files (x86) Folder.
>>While staying in the Windows drive, click on 'View' (top left corner) and check mark 'Hidden Files'.
>>Open the 'Program Data' Folder and delete the Adobe folders.
>>Go back to the main Windows Drive and open the 'Users' folder.
>>Open the folder that matches your profile.
>>Delete Adobe folders from within all three folders. (Local, LocalLow, Roaming)
>>Open 'Registry Editor' (search 'regedit' in Windows search at the bottom) (Note: If you do not see a folder named Adobe in the mentioned folders, you may skip them.)
>>Expand HKEY_CURRENT_USER (click on the arrow beside the folder).
>>Further, expand Software and delete Adobe files.
>>Collapse HKEY_CURRENT_USER and expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
>>Further, expand Software and delete Adobe files.
>>Open your browser, click on the 3 dots in the top right corner, click on settings/extensions (depending upon your browser), from settings open extensions and delete/remove any Adobe plugins.
>>Restart your PC.

Locations from manual cleanup should be done

C:\Program Files\Adobe
- C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe
- C:\Program Files (x86) \Adobe
- C:\Program Files (x86) \ Common Files\ Adobe
- C:\Program Data\Adobe
- C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Adobe
- C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe

*NOTE: Please make sure that you have removed all the Adobe products from the user's computer before performing the manual cleanup.

[issaacr]

This seems to only temporarily resolve the freezing/not responding issues. Any other suggestions or known fixes?

[mason_0964]

Have you found any fixes that are permanent? Been dealing with this issue in my org affecting many users. Classic uninstall/reinstall fixes issues only temporarily (1-2 days). 

[Andrea36756568fewx]

I uninstalled Grammarly, no more issues.

[devid_7061]

I’ve experienced Acrobat freezing, especially when switching between files and browser windows. It happened recently while viewing this webpage alongside a large PDF. Have you tried updating your Acrobat version or clearing temporary cache files to see if that helps?