"An Internal Error Occured" when clicking on a PDF and Windows Explorer preview pane is showing.

[lisar19299332]

Hi there,

Running Windows 11, up-to-date system and up-to-date Creative Cloud and Adobe Acrobat DC. I have my preview pane visible when going through my files, and sometime in the last 2 weeks PDFs no longer show up in the preview pane. Instead, windows explorer freezes for a few seconds and then shows an Adobe Acrobat "An Internal Error Occured" pop-up. I tried clearing out my temporary files, and tried creating a "2022" folder in C:\Users\(user)\AppData\Local\Adobe\Acrobat\ which was suggested in this thread. Neither worked. All other file types (.jpg, .doc, etc.) show up in the preview pane just fine. Any suggestions?

 

[markelrayes · Accepted solution]

I FOUND A SOLUTION.

I had to go C:\Users\[me]\AppData\Local and right click the Adobe folder, click properties and go to security tab. I had a bunch of left-over "Account Unknown" listed besides my three main ones (System, [me], Admin). I deleted all the account unknowns.

That fixed it for me.

[Eric Brandley · Accepted solution]

This worked, for me! (thank god, what a pain in the a**)
I couldn't find the "AppData" folder, I ended up finding it by clicking "view", then "show" and then toggling on "hidden files".

[P29008502rlib]

Fixed! For real thank you!! Such an irritating error 

[petercubic]

Literally a life saver... Thank you SOOO MUCH!

[ED295281636cms]

Hooray MarkelRayes! This totally worked! Thank you!

[A29654428sies]

checked everything. No "unknown" accounts (only SYSTEM, [me] and Admin. The error is still occuring. Any ideas?

[defaulthsn5j9jri5vm]

This does not work for me as there are only 3 accounts, admin, me and system. Although the disabling the Preview pane stps the error, it means I can't use the preview pane which is a useful tool. Only a work around, not a solution. The problem only occurs for me when clicking on a PDF that has onedrive syncing it. Not my local machine. Microsoft seems to not have any support for this but it's clearly an issue on both sides. Any other solutions other than already shared? Also, what is the cause of it?

[Eric Brandley · Accepted solution]

This worked, for me! (thank god, what a pain in the a**)
I couldn't find the "AppData" folder, I ended up finding it by clicking "view", then "show" and then toggling on "hidden files".

[HAMID_MOHAMED0483]

Thanksss Dudeee

[Diana26401754wrzd]

That also worked for me! God bless you! You are an angel

[diegoa94773924]

This fix worked for me as well. Thank you.

[christopher30162767wvqd]

Hey just wanted to come here and say that while this solution did not work for me, I deleted all files located at "C:\Users\[me]\AppData\Local and right click the Adobe folder" and just deleted them all, then tried running adobe and it finally worked fine. Took me hours of work trying to figure out what could be the issue.

uninstalling and reinstalling didn't work, downloading the latest patch didn't work, permissions were fine, no unknown users in the permissions tab. deleting temp folder didn't work. What finally got this bug resolved for me was deleting that entire file, it rebuilt when i relaunched adobe. I just want to say that if you get an error saying that the file is in use, use task manager to close all instances of adobe including the cloud app, and the update messenger app. 

[JtotheR]

Thank you!!! This was the only option that worked for me. 

[Yash22204185z0jd]

Thank you so much, spent hours and days trying to fix this. Finally i can view and edit documents usin acrobat.

[Jed Davenport]

Thank you!  This seems to have solved the problem for me...

[psyborg042]

Thank you so much! I think this fixed the problem for me!

[Juan Cruz33608956vecu · Accepted solution]

Me paso lo mismo, entre en la ruto que colocaron y le saque los permisos heredados y borre los los desconocidos y hasta ahora funciona

[rajeshd14995910]

Even Adobe escalated team could not resolved this entering remotely in to my pc for several hours, but your this technic worked for me within 10 minuits. "MILLIONS OF THANK YOU! !!!!!!!!"

[Sergi26919921jptb]

Thanks!!!

[eiasbieassy]

it works finally, thank u ,,,...

[Sasan36068312drol]

Thank you very much for your advice.

[Tony_Gill]

The fact that I'm still getting updates on this thread TWO YEARS after it was first posted suggests that a) @markelrayes may have posted the single most useful Adobe community post ever, and B) reflects VERY poorly on Adobe that this is still even an issue!

[Dandy Dani]

This worked for me too!

 YOU ROCK! THANK YOU!

[Josh-Knight]

I've tried all of the solutions listed here. I'm running Windows 11, completely upto date system. I've worked out it's an Adobe Acrobat DC issue by removing Adobe Acrobat and letting the system fallback to Foxit phantom pdf which was my previous default software. The moment I did this, all of the pdf's can be previewed without a fuss. 

I'm at a complete loss of how to resolve this for now and don't want to waste more time than I already have. 

[RedFeathers]

Hi Josholo,

Adobe hasn't been very helpful in this thread. I'm not sure how to apply the Account Unknown fix in Windows 11. Maybe start a new discussion?

If I find any helpful tips or solutions I'll post them here for you.

As a quick fix, you can disable the preview pane in your folders, but as a designer, it's almost as frustrating as the errors.

[Josh-Knight]

Its a very frusting error, especially if you are doing any design and you have alot of files. The preview screen can really help with workflow and efficiency. 
For now, using the default system viewer without Adobe Acrobat DC installed is getting me out of trouble and working without a fuss. When i'm not buried in projects, I'll revisit this one and see if I can resolve. 

Strange that the preview works inside application like outlook but not in explorer. I unfortunatley don't have all of these 'unknown accounts' which has stumped as to the source of the error. 

[RedFeathers]

That is strange, are you sure you looked in the right folder?

It has happened that people have gone into the wrong folder, did you type out the file path or just click through? C:\Users\[username]\AppData\Local and then right-click on the Adobe folder?

Have you tried posting on a Microsoft forum?

I've attached the 5-step screenshots that I made in case you missed them.