Windows: Adobe Reader (24.003.20180) freezes constantly (Oct. 2024)

[German]A quick question for the readers of this blog who use or administer Adobe Reader. Are there more and more reports that the Reader under Windows hangs after being called up and then no longer responds? I have come across corresponding reports, but do not yet have a clear picture of the root cause. It`s the "new Acrobat" feature with cloud connection in reader – maybe also the AI integration, that causes the issue.

Adobe Reader 2024.003.20180

I just checked, the last update of Adobe Reader to build 2024.003.20180 was on October 3, 2024 (see this Adobe post). The changes are described here – in the release notes of build 2024.003.20180 only the fix 4482335 (Error when starting Acrobat/Reader 32-bit on a Windows 7 computer: entry point not found) is mentioned.

Reports about freezes

I don't use Adobe Reader and no longer follow its updates here on the blog. So I came across problem reports more or less by chance and did some research.

Report #1 about Freezes

The colleagues at German site administrator.de have a thread Adobe Reader – no response from October 22, 2024, in which problems are described. The post is quite unspecific (no version of Adobe Reader DC, no information about the operating system). The affected person simply writes that he has had massive problems with the "Acrobad DC Reader" in the last few days. The error pattern: The user opens a PDF document and the reader freezes immediately. There is no reaction, but after a while the Acrobat Reader works again and the PDF can be used normally.

This should happen with almost every PDF and on different computers (under Windows). Other users/administrators confirm this problem in the thread. One administrator/user wrote that he is now switching to the Microsoft Edge browser because it has a built-in PDF viewer. I don't know if this is a long-term solution, as Microsoft wanted to integrate Adobe Reader into Edge.

Report #2 about freezes

In the Adobe Forum there is the post Adobe Acrobat 24.003.20180 WIN11 – freezing problems from October 14, 2024, which specifies both the Acrobat Reader DC build and the Windows version. It states that the Reader causes problems when opening PDF files directly from Outlook.

Saving to the local SSD or to network shares causes Acrobat to simply freeze when scrolling, trying to print or trying to save. Several users there also confirm this error, while the moderators in the Adobe forum state that the engineering team cannot reproduce the problem.

Possible workarounds

I have come across two workarounds from the user community that should alleviate this problem. A user writes in the administrator.de thread Adobe Reader – no reaction:

We are currently experiencing more problems again. Until this entry here, we assumed that it was the "old" problem of adverts again (can be found in the Adobe forum). At least for us the same solution helps:

Menu -> Disable New Acrobat View.

And in the post Adobe Acrobat 24.003.20180 WIN11 – freezing problems from the Adobe community someone has just posted the following fix:

Our workaround is:

1. Open Adobe (be sure to have no PDF's open)

2. File and select "disable new acrobat"

Puts us back to the older version where these issues are not a problem!  Worked a treat.

This is probably the same workaround as at administrator.de. Another workaround suggested was to clear the list of recently opened files in the application.