Adobe Reader 11.0.07 freezes for ~8 seconds when opening a PDF file

Question

Whenever I open Adobe Reader by opening a .pdf file on my system (Windows 7 x64) if the Internet connection is not available (no connection at all, or even wrong Internet settings, like a proxy that is not there), Adobe Reader will work for about 1 sec, then freeze for 8 sec or more, after which it will work normally.

When Internet is enabled, it freezes for less than 1 sec instead. No CPU activity, no network activity when Internet is disabled (of course), and memory load is 80 MB during the freeze, out of 100 MB when it finally starts to work.

To me, it is a distinct signature of a network process that conditions the execution of the entire application. Adobe is looking for something on the Internet, and won't allow any action from the user, even a scroll, until it's finished, or sure that the resource is unavailable, by...waiting for the timeout. And I'm waiting for that timeout too. Every time I open Adobe Reader after it was completely closed.

I've seen something about recently used files that are on an unavailable network location. I've tried reducing the recently used file list to 1 in the preferences/document menu, but this does not affect the complete list of recently used files, only what is displayed in the "file" menu.

None of the other answers (disable protected mode at startup, disable automatic authentication of signatures at startup, disable everything that required an automatic network action from adobe that I could identify) worked for me. The only thing I can do to work without this annoying interruption is to let the Internet on all the time, which is sometimes impossible.

If anyone has the REAL explanation to that problem, I would be very grateful. What is Adobe Reader looking for on the net that is so badly necessary that it has to stop functioning at all at startup until it finds what it's looking for?

Thank you for your help!

Solution 1

As suggested above, I transform my "Edit" into an answer.

What worked for me was to allow Adobe Reader to connect to the Internet (the tricky thing was I oscillate back and forth between proxy and no proxy at work and at home, and usually as I'm lazy I only set the proxy in Firefox, but not on the (Windows 7) system, which is what Adobe uses for Reader). After doing that, the next day, there was no problem anymore.

Once you do, and start Adobe Reader, you will still see the freeze, but only for about 0.3 s while it retrieves what it is looking for on the net. I still have absolutely no idea what exactly is this web routine doing and why it has to cause a complete freeze of Reader while it counts down the timeout when no Internet connection is present. The suggestion of chokingyou seems right, though I could not test it on my configuration and verify it, since I did not experience the problem anymore.

This is why I mark my answer as the chosen answer, and upvoted chokingyou's answer for those who want to know the real (and probable) ultimate cause of the problem.

Solution 2

I had absolutely same symptoms as described above (8 sec freeze with disabled Internet and 1-2 sec with Internet). after trying most of the methods discussed here (disabling security mode in Settings and via regedit, reinstalling Reader, rebooting), I was experimenting on disabling plug-ins (.api) one by one to see if the problem was connected with one of them, and at least in my case it was!

in the end I found out that if you disable the Weblink plugin (see a how-to below), everything becomes normal! (although, alas, you loose the super-ability to follow web links from a PDF document — however, in most cases you can just copy the URL and paste it into your browser manually)

to disable the plugin you need to:

1. shut down all running instances of AcroRd32.exe
2. go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\plug_ins\" folder
3. cut the file "weblink.api" and paste it somewhere outside that folder (e.g. in a new folder such as "(...)\Reader\plug_ins_BAK\") — or simply rename the file changing the extension to get something like "weblink.api.bak".

then try to run Adobe Reader.

Comments

[Admin]

Have you also deactivated the Welcome screen?

[Admin]

+1. This is exactly the problem I've been getting the last few months; as I don't let Adobe products talk automatically out to the internet. Internet access suggests feature bloat frankly.

[Admin]

N.B. I've submitted a bug report to Adobe. As they use a completely opaque submission system, I've got no bug tracking number for you. Remains to be seen if the problem gets resolved.

[Admin]

@MrBody Can you remove the last edit from your question and make that an actual answer? You can answer your own questions on SU, and you can even mark them as the correct answer afetr 48 hours.

[Admin]

@MrBrody - you should add your Edit as an answer instead, and mark it as 'accepted' so that other people know what worked for you

[Admin]

possible duplicate of Adobe reader slow opening pdf files

[MrBrody]

I did not know about the "disable product messaging". This might actually be it, although I'm not sure. I've already tried the other two, it did not help!

[LateralFractal]

Sorry. None of these work. Although strictly speaking I should be downvoting Adobe developers instead an untested answer.

[Lonzak]

This is not an untested answer since solution 3 worked for me. However maybe your problem is a different one...

[HaydnWVN]

Fantastic answer, related to mine here - superuser.com/a/848051/102661