Adobe Reader not launching after just saving file with signature

[Wouter5FE6]

We've got a strange issue with one of our users. 

He pointed out he couldnt launch Adobe Reader sometimes and we could reproduce it by inserting a signature and fully closing Acrobat.

When you try to launch Adobe Reader in the next 30 or so seconds it won't launch.

I checked the running processes and it seems that Adobe Reader has some difficulty closing (only when using the signature function).

This wasn't the case before and when trying to reproduce it on my own PC i had no issues.

It doesn't give an error code 99% of the time, but i did once get the following error:

"Acrobat failed to connect to a DDE server."

I've tried the following things to fix it:

- repair installation

- Tried variations of advanced security settings (turning everything off, certain things off or on and all on)

- Removed Adobe Reader and installed the newest version

- Removed the newest version of Adobe Reader with the cleanup tool (Adobe AcroCleaner) and installed an older version (2019)

- tried every possible solution in the following topic: https://helpx.adobe.com/in/acrobat/kb/failed-to-connect-to-dde-server.html

I tried some other random things, but to no avail.

Does anybody have an idea how to fix this?

Laptopinfo:

HP Probook 450 G6

Windows 10 20H2

[Amal.]

Hi Wouter

Hope you are doing well and sorry for the trouble. As described you are getting the error 'Acrobat failed to connect to a DDE server'

The error occurs when an already launched instance of Acrobat is busy or in a hang state and you try to perform some operation from outside Acrobat, for example, opening a PDF file by double-clicking.

Please try to reboot the computer once and see if that helps.

Have you tried the registry fix suggested in the help page - https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/failed-to-connect-to-dde-server.html

Also please make sure that you have the latest version 21.05.20048 installed. Go to Help > Check for Updates and reboot the computer once

You may also try to create a new test user profile in Windows with full admin rights and try using the application there and check.

Regards

Amal

[Wouter5FE6]

Sorry for the late response.

I only just got around to testing some aditional things.

As stated in the original post we tried every fix from this helppage;

https://helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/kb/failed-to-connect-to-dde-server.html

We've also installed multiple version (after fully removing the other version), but all versions have this problem.

Right now i've verified that the problem is not limited to the users profile, since the problem still occurs on a different user.

Since no other user has reported this issue in our organization and we couldnt reproduce this on any other machine, we are quite sure the problem is with the laptop.

Normally we would switch out the laptop and be done with this, but in this particulair case we want to avoid this at all cost.

Is there anything else we can try?

[Amal.]

Hi there

Sorry for the delay in response. Please try to create a new test user profile in Windows with full admin rights and try using the application there and check.

Regards

Amal

[Wouter5FE6]

The other user i tried had admin permissions.

So it's not in the userprofile.

Do you have any other ideas?