Getting "Windows - Application Error" errors in the latest Acrobat version

Report · Apr 11, 2025

I have multiple users who are reporting this issue that comes up when using Acrobat:

There isn't a specific action that causes it; for one user, it comes up when they save a PDF document. One user has it come up for almost every action--combining PDFs, editing, signing, etc.--and it constantly interrupts their work.

They are both on the latest version, Adobe Acrobat 64-bit 25.001.20435.

I have tried fixing generic Windows errors through chkdsk, sfc /scannow, and DISM. I made sure drivers were up to date. However, the error seems to only come up when using Acrobat, so I think I have mostly ruled out a generic Windows error or memory error.

Looking at the event viewer logs, I do see error 1328 coming up for both. Here is the full error:

Product: Adobe Acrobat (64-bit) -- Error 1328.Error appliying patch to file C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat DC\Acrobat Elements\ContextMenu64.dll. It has probably been updated by other means, and con no longer be modified by this patch. For more informationcontact your patch vendor. System Error: -1072807676

This error also comes up for both machines I've looked at:

Product: Adobe Acrobat (64-bit) - Update 'Adobe Acrobat (25.001.20435)' could not be installed. Error code 1603.

For both machines I have been testing on, I have completely deleted all Adobe folders / files and registry entries, and ran the Adobe cleanup tool, restarted, and reinstalled Creative Cloud and Acrobat. Same issue.

Since I've tried most of the fixes I know off of the top of my head, I'm wondering if this is possibly an Adobe issue introduced in a recent patch? And is there possibly a setting I can change to fix this?

Report · Apr 11, 2025

Hi there

This is a known issue and our engineering team is actively working on it.

In the meantime, please try disabling assistive technologies. To do this, Go to Preferences (Ctrl,Cmd+K) > Accessibility and uncheck “Enable assistive technology support,” then restart Adobe Acrobat application and check.

Let us know how it goes.

Report · Apr 11, 2025

I appreciate the response, I will try enabling this and see if it helps resolve the issue. Thank you.

Report · Apr 16, 2025

Hello Isaak!

I hope you are doing well.

Thank you for your time and cooperation. We will provide an update when a fix is available.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

Report · Jun 10, 2025

This error still seems to be a problem. I keep having the error pop up every time I stamp something with a signature specifically. I tried unchecking the "Enable assistive technology support" in the 'Accessibility' tab and that did not work. Is there anything else I can do? It's driving me insane.

Report · Jun 10, 2025

The fix recommended by Adobe worked for 2 people that were having the issue, but for several others it did NOT work. When I've been looking through other community and forum posts, I've seen this issue happening as far back as 2015. Adobe claims they are working on it, but if they haven't fixed it in 10 years, I kinda doubt it will ever be fixed.

A couple more things you can try: If you see the error when opening PDFs through Outlook, try downloading the Adobe app in Outlook. If it's unrelated to Outlook, try running Acrobat in compatability mode or running the compatability troubleshooter.

It's clear that while Adobe markets their live service as continually improving, the only thing improving is their profits as we pay them every month to ignore us.

Report · Jun 10, 2025

I'll give it a try... thanks so much!

Report · Jun 11, 2025

Hello @Isaak37906817yajz & Emily_Dean5029!

I hope you are doing well, and thanks for reaching out.

Thank you for sharing the steps that worked for you. And I am sorry for the trouble.

Please install the latest build of Acrobat 25.001.20531 (Win) | 25.001.20529 (Mac), planned update June 10, 2025, and see if you still get the error message.

If the issue still continues, please provide the following information: the current version of the operating system on your device and the logs from the affected machine. To collect the logs, download and run the Log Collector tool. Make sure to select all log options and attempt to reproduce the issue. After that, close the Log Collector tool; it will generate the logs along with a log ID. Please share this log ID with us for further investigation.

Thanks for your time and cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

Report · Jun 12, 2025

Thank you for the response. I will have our users manually update. It is worth noting that running the compatibility troubleshooter for the Acrobat exe file in program files and using the Windows recommended compatibility settings worked for resolving the issue.

Report · Sep 15, 2025

Running it in Windows 8 compatability mode does indeed work, but this obviously needs to be investigated further by the engineering team. Some additional information. The crash is in acroML.dll. It's failing to load something (with the failure likely being policy or permission related), but it proceeds to try and load a value 0x18 bytes off NULL (the failed load).

Another workaround is to effectively disable acroML.dll by naming it something like acroML.dll.bak. This prevents it from loading entirely, but it likely disables some unknown machine learning? (ML) features. I've seen no adverse consequences for my use cases, and this method doesn't require running in Win 8 compatability mode.

Finally, here is a simple repro case that I've verified on 3 fresh install Windows 11 machines, which happens every time. With the default windows outlook and the 64bit acrobat installed, right click on PDF, select share, and select outlook. An empty email will come with with the attachment. Double click that attachment to open it from the email message into acrobat. After opening, within a few moments an instance of acrobat.exe (not the one showing the document), will crash. Anyway, it happens every time, and again it's been verified on 3 different machines. So this should be a pretty definitive test case for the developers to diagnose.

Report · Sep 16, 2025

I appreciate the additional details! Maybe if Adobe would let us into the codebase we could just fix this instead of waiting for months. I just had a user ask me about this yesterday, so it is still causing issues.

Report · Sep 17, 2025

Hello @Isaak37906817yajz

Could you please collect the logs from the affected machine and share them with us for further investigation? Please provide the following information: the current version of the operating system on your device and the logs from the affected machine. To collect the logs, download and run the Log Collector tool. Make sure to select all log options and attempt to reproduce the issue. After that, close the Log Collector tool; it will generate the logs along with a log ID. Please share this log ID with us.

Thanks,

Anand Sri.

Report · Sep 17, 2025

@jims92361021 already gave you a way to reliably reproduce the error; I'm not going to do your job for you. Good luck.

Report · Sep 18, 2025

Hello @Isaak37906817yajz

The logs help us isolate and find the root cause for specific environments. We have already reported this to the development team for further investigations, and more real-time info helps us expedite the fix.

We'll share the update here once the fix is available publicly.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

Report · Sep 25, 2025

Hello,

Hope you are doing well.

We are live with a new update (25.1.20744) that fixes this issue. Please update the app to the latest version and let us know if the issue is fixed for you.

To check for updates, go to Menu > Help > Check for Updates.

To know more: https://adobe.ly/4nUtVbr

Regards,
Souvik.