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Acrobat Reader DC - high cpu usage - suddenly

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 13, 2020
17 replies
80613 views

hi everyone,

i'm experiencing a very annoying behaviour of acrobat reader on win 10, I usually work all the day having acrobat reader always open with 4/5 simple pdf files open, about a month ago I started experiencing this problem:

suddenly, the cpu usage of the adobe reader process goes high, without any action or any new files opened or whatever, it just starts randomly, as you can see from this picture

more than 20% of a quad core i7 7th, causing overheat and useless fan noise. pointless

I can't really understand why this happens, I have the latest version installed, i always check and install updates, but nothing changes, I also performed the "repair installation" tool and I also uninstalled it completely then reinstalled.

It's very very annoying, all day it works normally then suddenly starts doing that. If i close and re-open it sometimes it keeps working normally, sometimes the problem reappears in a while.

Correct answer Amal.

This high random CPU usage issue is HORRIBLE. This doesn't happen to to any of the other programs...

Hi there

We are sorry to hear that. Would you mind sharing 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 22.1.20085 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also Go to Edit (Win), Adobe Acrobat (Mac) > preferences > Page Display > Under rendering, Uncheck 'use page cache' > Click OK and reboot the computer.

Regards

Amal

T

Tomas272375441qto

New Participant

Hello, just wanted to say that Im having same problem (high CPU ussage in background).

Windows 11 Home

CPU Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10875H

mgroeber

New Participant

For what it's worth, I have just encountered one case on Windows 11 where unchecking "Use page cache" in Settings (German: "Seiten-Cache verwenden") did indeed stop high CPU usage immediately (not even a restart of Adobe Reader was requried).

So, this is definitely worth a try.

F

Flamboyant_help5196

New Participant

I can confirm that this worked for me as well. I'm currently on Adobe Reader 25.001.20577 on Windows 10, and Adobe Reader always showed 8.5% CPU load, or 100% of one of my 12 cores. I unchecked Page Cache and, as soon as I clicked OK in the settings dialogue, the CPU load dropped to 0.0%.

A web search suggests that this is not the only performance problem caused by the Use Page Cache option. A bit ironic for a feature that was supposed to improve performance! But I don't think on modern machines the feature is useful anyway, it's probably a relic from the 90s.

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Tom25944047rlh5

New Participant

Hi,

I have the same problem on my new macbook pro M1 from 2020. I did not have this issue with my old macbook air from 2013. Everytime i open Acrobat reader dc it consumes between 15-35% of CPU. How is this possible? I have currently unticked 'use page cache' but the problem remains unchanged. When using other PDF readers the CPU usage is next to nothing. How can this be resolved?

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Otanjac265146339gyy

New Participant

There's no way of resolving the issue, It's now more than 2 years old and adobe does nothing to solve it. The only sollution is to use other software from other companies.

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Tom25944047rlh5

New Participant

Hi,

The problem disapeared for me after a while. I ticked the 'use page cache' again and now im keeping many huge pdfs open all the time without cpu usage above 3%. It seems as it just needs time for some unclear computing with new documents (caching?) then it stops. I still havent found a better program to use anyway but it works well now.

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Tomas220125504ixh

New Participant

Having the same problem, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC 2021.007.20099. Constantly eating 5-8% CPU when application is doing nothing! Just few open PDF files.

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MattGreer

Inspiring

Everything was fine until I re-upped my subscription. Now Acrobat wants me to do everything in the cloud. It's just stupid.

My guess is Acrobat is attempting to upload your document to the cloud, even though you may have elected not to, and it's going through some kind of processing to index things that simply don't need to be dealt with.

Hey Adobe. It's Acrobat. It's supposed to display a file, not solve the mysteries of the universe. Please, for the love of all that's holy, let us turn off everything so we can just read a darn PDF. Please. I don't need your exceptional cloud searching capabilities, I don't need any help with the exception of not hogging my CPU.

Amal.

Correct answer

Community Manager

This high random CPU usage issue is HORRIBLE. This doesn't happen to to any of the other programs...

Hi there

We are sorry to hear that. Would you mind sharing 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 22.1.20085 installed. Go to Help > Check for updates and reboot the computer once.

Also Go to Edit (Win), Adobe Acrobat (Mac) > preferences > Page Display > Under rendering, Uncheck 'use page cache' > Click OK and reboot the computer.

Regards

Amal

T

The Real Lebowski

New Participant

Honestly, this is ridiculous!! I have pro XI and DC both installed. I've stopped using DC because of the resource hog that it is. Nevermind if creative cloud fires up and clogs my system. How many updates and chronic communications back and forth do you really need? I mean really guys, what the heck is going on? Brand new laptop with 16GB ram and DC/CC are pretty much unusable. Full Bluebeam suite even runs faster. I'm not sure I want to stick with Adobe any longer. You've gone from something pretty amazing to just about garbage in less than 5 years.

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Muhammad Faiq5E6D

New Participant

I had the same problem. Uninstalled then reinstalled. Didn't fix anything.

Then I saw the compatibilty mode ticked, I unticked it and Adobe now works fine.

See if doing THAT can help.

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barry s.finkel

New Participant

I have the same problem on Windows 10 21H1 64-bit - Acrobat Reader Continuous Release 2021.007.20099 64-bit. I currently have Reaader open with about 10 tabs. I have Reader iminimzed, and it is using 7-18% CPU, sometimes more. I have taken a screen shot of ProcessExplorer (process Acrobat.exe) and attached it. I can understand Reader using CPU when I have it open and I am reading a PDF file, but I do not understand "large" CPU usage when I have the application minimized.

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barry s.finkel

New Participant

I downloaded and ran ProcMon. I have attached the .csv file of the trace of the one Acrobat.exe PID that was using CPU. There are 2,738 lines in the file - 2,423 are ReadFile and 315 CreateFile. I would expect that if I had the Reader application open, then the application would be reading the PDF file I was reviewing. But if the application is minimized, then I have no idea why Reader is trying to read files that it already has open and loaded, and I do not know why Reader is tryng to create [temporary?] files in a directory that does not exist.

Acrobat-211028-PID12820-CSV.csv

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default5miwe53fduzf

New Participant

Hi. We are also facing this problem in our Terminal Server. Is there anything we can do to solve this problem?

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PaulFromEC1

New Participant

Hello . I'm too expieriencing same problem.

I'm using LENOVO THINKPAD P15S GEN 1

CPU:Intel Core i7-10510U

Ram:16 GB

SSD: 512 GB

GPU: NVIDIA Quadro P520 2GB GDDR5

I'm using free version of Adobe DC Acrobat Reader. 32 bit.

After Opening one of pdf document, Ram rise up to 20 %. and it loads very slowly.

What i did to tried resolve this problem to no but without consequences.

1. Reinstalling app.

2. Disabling SAFE features.( it workded but other program what use ADOBE PDF started not responding so i swithed SAFE feuture.

3.Tried to open Adobe reader in safe mode.

Nothing worked.

(P.S) Problem dissapearing after using Foxitreader for opening same document. It opens Instantly.

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PaulFromEC1

New Participant

*Forgot to mention *

Using Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Also tried to switch Program Using CPU VIDEO graphics to Nvidia Quadro but no results.

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Liana15D5

New Participant

I can't even normally open Acrobat Reader DC. Keep getting (Not Resp[onding) with the only solution to remove the software from my PC. Reboot and re-install again. About 5times a week. This sucks.
Strange that it still doesn't work and that you can not even resolve this problem

V

Vinod Dobhal

Adobe Employee

Hi @Liana15D5,

We are sorry for the inconvenience. Could you pls. let us know the answer to the following queries:

What is the version of Acrobat Reader DC installed on your system?
Also are there any other Adobe products installed on your system (e.g. Photoshop, Illustrator, LightRoom etc.) apart from Acrobat Reader?
Could you please share the process dump or procmon log captured during the not responding state?

Thanks,

Vinod

A

ANDREW5E09

New Participant

Dear Vinod,

I am new here and only started using the Adobe Acrobat DC software a couple of months ago, and over the last few days I have been experiencing this same problem.

But what I don't like is you apparent pretence of ignorance of the problem, when I see the same CPU memory overusage problem in complaints going back to 2015 and possible longer!

When is this problem going to get fixed?

I expect a LOT more from a company of Adobe's size!

Regards

Andy

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Damon16B8

New Participant

I am having the same problem. I have attached my logs. What do I do about this?

Sample_of_Acrobat_Pro_DC.txt

New Participant

Note, I am using 2021.001.20138

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Data5FE1

New Participant

Having same issue on Windows RDS Server 2016.
adoberdrcef and adobe acrobat reader DC (32bit) are killing the CPU and the users are feeling the effect. Can we get a resolution on this.

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