Stop RdrCEF.exe from running

[ConanTheArnbarian]

Hello, we have Citrix servers where Reader DC is installed.  I was spending time checking the processes running on the server and there were many, many instances of RdrCEF.exe running.  After doing some research on this process I'm still not clear on what it does.  Is it used for Reader updates?  Is it used for syncing cloud services?  Maybe both?  Different posts say different things.  Either way, we update Reader through other means and we do not need the cloud service, so we do not need or want RdrCEF running.  I've searched and searched, but cannot find anything about how to stop this process from running other than renaming the .exe file.

I saw this post below where other people were complaining about it on Citrix servers too, but there was nothing in there about stopping RdrCEF from running. 

RdrCEF high cpu usage

I have implemented these registry keys, but RdrCEF.exe still runs.  Am I missing other registry keys to stop the RdrCEF.exe from launching?  Is there anything else I can do, other than rename the .exe file?

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

"bUpdater"=dword:00000000

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

"bAdobeSendPluginToggle"=dword:00000000

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

"bUpdater"=dword:00000000

"bToggleWebConnectors"=dword:00000001

"bTogglePrefsSync"=dword:00000001

"bToggleAdobeDocumentServices"=dword:00000001

"bToggleAdobeSign"=dword:00000001

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

"bDisableSharePointFeatures"=dword:00000001

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

"bDisableWebmail"=dword:00000001

Thank you!

[Sunil_Soni]

Hello conanthearnbarian,

Some services(Like Document Cloud, Create PDF, Export PDF, etc) of Reader DC are based on HTML and RdrCEF.exe is responsible for taking care of these HTML views. There is independent RdrCEF.exe process for each HTML view loaded in the application.

So RdrCEF is not a detachable process and if you rename the RdrCEF.exe to stop this process, Some part of Reader DC won't be functioning at all.

Overall, You can't disable RdrCEF.exe process.

Please let us know if you are facing any other issue with RdrCEF(not just the n number of processes).

-Thanks

Acrobat Team

[bobferguson1]

I have seen RdrCEF taking 49.97% of the (quad) processor bandwidth (2 separate PIDs) on Windows 10 when only one .pdf document was open and being displayed. When I closed the doc, network (Ethernet) traffic stopped and processor load returned to normal, when I opened the document again, the network traffic started again. No scrolling, editing, or user activity was happening, but this behavior was observed for 10 minutes. Something is transmitting and receiving data across the network while this document is active; and it is taking major processor bandwidth. Looks like a security issue.

[Guest]

We have a Citrix environment as well.  We have seen this rdrCEF.exe process collect up to 4GB of Memory and 25% of the processor and just hold it.  This is extremely problematic for our multi-user environment.  We have seen one user with 3 such instances of rdrCEF.exe running.  This caused a variety of other issues as the server quickly ran out of resources. 

I was able to log in, see these processes, end the tasks via the windows task manager, and see that nothing closed on the users UI console.  In fact, ending the tasks did not appear to affect what the user was doing at all. 

We are running the latest version of Adobe Reader DC.

[Zack5C27]

Get rid of adobe reader.

There are less bloated PDF readers out there, Adobe will do nothing to help you.

[Sunil_Soni]

Hello everyone,

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

-Thanks

Sunil Soni

[Guest]

Where can I place the Dump File?

• Environment/Platform/System information
  • Server 2008R2 / Citrix XenApp 6.0
• Application(Reader) version
  • Reader DC 2017.009.20044
• Are you using/installed any screen reader(JAWS, NVDA, etc.)
  • No
• How much time reader is running for ?
  • unknown / not consitent
• Fiddler logs for analyzing network traffic
  • do not have this.
• Exact steps to reproduce the issue(capture a video to reproduce the issue if possible)
  • cannot predictably replicate the issue.  We use the application to generate a web report for printing
• Processes memory dump
  • Task manager -> Right click on the "RdrCEF" process and create dump File
    • Where can I upload this file?
  • Task manager -> Right click on the "AcroRd32" process and create dump file

[Sunil_Soni]

upload and send via https://cloud.acrobat.com/send

-Thanks

Sunil Soni

[Guest]

thanks.

the file is uploaded:  Shared Files - Acrobat.com

[Sunil_Soni]

Thanks, We will look at it.

[Sunil_Soni]

Hi kg5648934,

We had look on the dump but couldn't see any instance of high memory usage. It's quite possible that while taking dump process went to normal resource usage state.

Required more information, kindly use following tool : Download Acrobat and Reader Process Monitor Tool - Adobe Labs

and share the procMon log.

Kindly let me know for any assistance.

[Guest]

Hi Sunil2201,

I sent you the link to the procMon log via PM.  Did you receive it?  Is there any update as to what might be going on?

[Sunil_Soni]

Thanks, will look into it and update you as progress.

-Sunil Soni

[Guest]

Thanks for looking into this.  It seems rolling back to Adobe XI has resolved the issue for the time being.  Please let me know what you find.

[Guest]

Is there any update?  Did the log files capture the issue sufficiently?

[Guest]

This issue still exists.  The auto update feature updated a few of our servers and we see still see this random memory leak in the DC version.  We rolled back to XI to prevent this from occurring.  Has there been any progress in determining the cause?

[Sunil_Soni]

Thanks for your patience here.

While we investigate the leaks here, we request for more information -

1) Usually how many RdrCEF processes are present when they see the leak?
2) And a few more process dumps if possible -
Capturing dumps on Citrix is present here
https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126255

-Thanks

Sunil Soni

[Guest]

1.)  there are multiple RdrCEF processes.  This is a shared server, so there were up to 10 to 15 from multiple users at any given time.  Usually each user had no more than 1 - 3 RdrCEF processes at a time.

2.) unfortunately we are unable to replicate this in our test environment and we had to roll back to Reader XI in production to avoid this issue. 

[mft81352273]

Good morning,

we are facing similar issue here. we have a RDS session host, server 2016, with a multi user environment.

Adobe reader is installed in version DC 2018.011.20038.

rdrcef.exe is executed in each user session, and everything is fine if it is around 30M. but sometimes it grows up to 4G and when this happens, the overall system availability is severely impacted.

Do you have suggestion?

Thanks and regards.

[Zack5C27]

dump Adobe and use a better written PDF reader. 

Reading a glorified image document shouldnt be crippling servers. 

[ericr30395346]

Same issue here.

Running Server 2016 Datacenter in Azure as a terminal server. 40-50 people connected to the server at a time, yet I see this service running 120+ times  = \

I would LOVE to eliminate this!

[leer22668289]

Same issue here.

20/25 users per Windows 2008R2 Citrix 7.15 CU4 server.

RdrCEF.exe process is running away with high CPU, killing the system.

I've renamed the file and created a blank text file in its place.  OK to stop the process running, but causes other issues with users using Acrobat.

This issue only started for us after update to Reader DC from 17.009.20044 to 19.012.20036

I'm rolling back to 17.009.20044 until this issue is resolved.

Adobe - please advise asap.  It's obviously an onoging issue with Reader.

[abdekker]

Disable as follows:

* Close Acrobat Reader

* Open Windows Explorer

* Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat Reader DC\Reader\AcroCEF

* Rename RdrCEF.exe to RdrCEF-Backup.exe

* Accept administrator UAC prompt for changing the name of a "protected" system file

Continue using Acrobat Reader. No apparent side effects.

To reverse, perhaps because you need one or more of the functions RdrCEF.exe provides, close Acrobat Reader and rename RdrCEF-Backup.exe.

[ChrisMottram]

We had the same issue and this worked for a short while, but RdrCEF.exe came back. Presumeably Acrobat replaced it. I created a file in notepad and called it RdrCEF.exe. So far so good.

[AKOBUS]

We do have the same issue on RDS Session hosts affecting performance.

Is there any plans from Adobe to address this issue?