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jairop52591993
New Participant
December 15, 2015
Answered

RdrCEF high cpu usage

  • December 15, 2015
  • 17 replies
  • 93204 views

Good Morning.
First of all, sorry for my low level of English.

A few days ago I installed Adobe Reader DC on all servers in my farm Citrix XenDesktop 7.6. Everything started well but now I have problems with high CPU usage. I have seen that for each user using Reader DC open between 1 and 3 processes with the same name, RdrCEF.exe. This process consumes a lot of memory and sometimes, depending on the PDF file, use much of the CPU causing performance problems in other user sessions on the server .

What is this process RdrCEF? Why it is opened several times per user ? And most importantly, how I can prevent this process use as much CPU?

I hope someone can help me.
Thank you.


This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Pmv5D82

Since we could find no other solutions, we removed Adobe Reader DC and installed Foxit Reader. We have no problems with CPU usage now.


Reader DC 2021.00.7.20091 32bit version was causing trouble for us on our 2016 RDS farm srevers. I tried running updates, repairs and reinstalling but no luck. Upgrading to the 64bit version has seemed to do the trick for us.

17 replies

J
jba1
New Participant
April 30, 2020

Hi -  I have the latest update on Acrobat Adobe DC and it still uses up almost all of my CPU. It makes my computer make a humming noise... I'm on a Mac. Please help.

N
nice_days15A8
New Participant
May 4, 2020

The issue is still there - I'm also running the latest version (20.006.20042).

The RdrCEF and the AcroRD32 processes use a lot of memory and cpu even when only small PDFs are opened by the users, which has heavy impact on the performance of the terminal servers. No Citrix involved here - just plain terminal server and RDP-Connections (via internal LAN). All microsoft updates are installed, too.

Will there be some fix soon?

J
jdbunda
New Participant
May 14, 2020

Same issue here on Mac OSX Catalina 10.15.4 on Macbook Pro, with Adobe signature:

Architecture: x86_64

Build: 20.9.20063.381938

AGM: 4.30.101

CoolType: 5.14.5

JP2K: 1.2.2.46033

 

Started when I had three large PDFs open, wouldn't go away even after quitting the app.   RdrCEF continued to run using 100% CPU, fan running.   Killed RdrCEF from Activity Monitor, and system returned to normal.

 

D
David_Merkel
New Participant
January 10, 2020

Two-part solution: 1) use Process Explorer (or a direct command) to change the priority of the rdrCEF CPU/memory hogs to Background 4.  The computer will relegate those tasks to the background, and other processes will work smoothly.

 

2) Let the processes run in the background.  They will eventually terminate when their updates are complete.

G
Gideon Badenhorst
New Participant
March 11, 2020

Post Edited - Ignore this, was posted to wrong user.

Tullamore75
Tullamore75
Participating Frequently
May 30, 2018

After having contact with Adobe we had to use App-V 5.x for the application (because Adobe does not support App-V 4.6).

We still faced the problem of high CPU and memory on RdrCEF.exe We found following:

- User has opened Acrobat from explorer with a pdf opened

- Now user opens a pdf document from within a App-V 5.x sequence

- New instance of Acrobat is opened...

- RdrCEF.exe starts using 10-30% CPU and a lot of memory

The issue seems to be in how Acrobat is started from the App-V Sequence. When AcroRd32.exe is called with the parameter /N the RdrCEF.exe starts using CPU and memory. If it is started without the parameter /N there is No Problem at all !

We now start de Acrobat from the App-V without the /N and users can set through Adobe Acrobat Properties screen if they want to open on a new TAB or in a new instance.

    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    May 1, 2018

    Hello Everyone,

    Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

    Would be great if environment could be shared for detailed investigation where issue is occurring consistently.

    Interested folks, kindly drop me at susoni@adobe.com with the reference of this forum link.

    -Thanks

    Sunil Soni

    A
    Alibakkar
    New Participant
    March 16, 2018

    Same Problem here:

    High CPU and Memory usage of RdrCEF.

    Win Server 2008 r2 & latest Reader DC Version (18.011.20038)

    A
    Anonymous
    March 13, 2018

    Same Problem here:

    Operating System Windows Server 2016

    Adobe Reader DC Version 18.011.20038

    A
    Anonymous
    March 20, 2018

    lolix
    lolix
    New Participant
    April 3, 2018

    Just killed 6 instances of the RdrCEF.exe for the same user (user session on RDS server) !

    Would be great to know what services are handled by RdrCEF.exe....

    I tried to renamed RdrCEF.exe and RdrServicesUpdater.exe. No problem in reading & printing but "Save as" doesn't work anymore

    D
    danilo_brambilla
    New Participant
    March 2, 2018

    Very same problem here, RdrCEF process uses 40% CPU and 3.7 GB RAM!

    Adobe Reader DC version 18.011.20038

    Operating System is Windows Server 2012 R2

    A
    Anonymous
    February 14, 2018

    I tried updating to the latest.  No change in the situation, we still see the spike in memory usage in the systems.  Essentially, I have been able to work around the issue by renaming the rdrCEF.exe file to something different.  Everything we use the Reader for works fine without that file.  The auto update will sneak the file back in so you have to add this registry entry to block auto updates.

    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown]

    "bUpdater"=dword:00000000

    I've read forums that you can change the dword value to dword:00000001 to allow manual updates. 

    hope this helps anyone else stuck in this situation.

    Hen_Solo
    Hen_Solo
    New Participant
    October 5, 2017

    Got the same issue even in acrobat DC version 2017.012.20098

    RdrCEF.exe is consuming one full core and almost 4 GB memory per process.

    One user is spawning 3 of these processes and thus slowing the RDS server to a crawl.

    If wanted I can provide the dump files of these processes.

    Kind regards,

    Hen

    A
    Anonymous
    November 13, 2017

    This issue is also reported here.  High memory usage in a Remote Desktop / Citrix environment.

    https://forums.adobe.com/message/9672381#9672381

    The only solution we have so far is to downgrade back to Adobe XI.  Otherwise just a couple of users could max out the memory on a server and cause issues for everyone.

    T
    Community Manager
    Tariq AhmadCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    November 15, 2017

    Hi kg,

    The latest update has been released yesterday for both Acrobat and Reader Overview — Acrobat and Adobe Reader Release Notes

    Try installing the latest update and let us know if that resolves your issues?

    -Tariq Dar

    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    October 13, 2016

    Hello Everyone,

    We have fixed such issues with our latest update. I would request you all to update Adobe software via Help -> Check for updates...

    Please let us know if you face this or any issue after update.

    -Thanks

    Sunil Soni

    R
    RobVA-dZvbRv
    New Participant
    January 24, 2017

    Hopefully Adobe is still monitoring this, but I found this thread when trying to fix the high CPU usage issue I have.

    I also have the issue where all PDFs I open go full screen regardless of last open or last setting.

    I ran an update and also installation repair, but cpu usage still very high.

    OS: Win 7 x64

    Adobe Acrobat Reader DC

    Installed version: 2015.023.20056

    I tried the easier solution above by Antonis and both the high cpu usage and always full screen issues were gone after I set the file to Win XP SP2 compatability mode.

    Looking forward to an official fix coming out for this since I'm sure others have the same issue.

    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    Sunil_Soni
    Adobe Employee
    May 24, 2017

    Hi Sunil2201

    Have a Customer with problems with this process also. Problems show in both high CPU usage + high memory use. Even after users closed Down Acrobat reader, "Adobe RdrCEF" just keeps running. Today had one user with closed Adobe, but 2 running "Adobe RdrCEF" using apx. 6 Gb of RAM (out of 16 Gb on the 2012 R2 Terminal server"), I've checked for updates through Adobe Acrobat, but says there are no updates. I'll try a repair of Acrobat Reader DC today at noon Danish local time - But not quite sure that will solve the problems. Attached one of the screenshots I have (only for one user, but can happen for more). Are the developers looking into these problems? Is Adobe RdrCEF supposed to run, when Adobe Reader DC is not running??????

    System Info:

    Windows server 2012 R2 Terminal server

    16 Gb RAM

    Kind Regards

    Kim


    Hi Kim,

    Yes, RdrCEF suppose to run if Reader DC is running because RdrCEF is responsible for multiple services provided by Reader DC.

    Sorry for the inconvenience caused to you.

    Ideally RdrCEF processes shouldn't consume system resources as significant as mentioned by you.

    To understand the issue, we would require following information:

    • Environment/Platform/System information
    • Application(Reader) version
    • Are you using/installed any screen reader(JAWS, NVDA, etc.)
    • How much time reader is running for ?
    • Fiddler logs for analyzing network traffic
    • Exact steps to reproduce the issue(capture a video to reproduce the issue if possible)
    • Processes memory dump
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "RdrCEF" process and create dump File
      • Task manager -> Right click on the "AcroRd32" process and create dump file

    Kindly keep us posted with the required information.

    -Thanks

    Sunil Soni

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