>15 seconds to load Acrobat after printing to PDF : Adobe Acrobat

I can find nothing in Search that is of any help in the bizarre situation which occurs loading Acrobat:

- < second: Double Click Icon - < second: Open PDF file on web using FireFox - < second: Open PDF file on web using Explorer 6 - <1 second: Print to Distiller from Word et al and view output PDF - ~15 seconds: Open PDF file from desktop Explorer - ~15 seconds: Open PDF file from Power Desk - >20 seconds: Print to PDF from Word et al and view output PDF

While Acrobat is taking the interminable time to open, the hourglass is visible and nothing else can be run/started etc. There is no disk activity, but the CPU appears to be 100% saturated.

Background:

A legacy W98SE system used to run a CD-R robot printer/duplicating system had an HDD failure. It has been stable for years with Acrobat 5 but the latest Ghost backup was Acrobat 4. Acrobat 4 was not giving acceptable output so installed Acrobat 5 (prefaced by uninstall of Acrobat 4).

The original system had a sluggish load of Acrobat 5 (<2 seconds) in all modes of operation but the restored system has the two extremes described above: virtually immediate and 15 seconds.

Apart from this oddity, everything is working correctly.

The modus operandi of this system is to generate PDFs from Word and PowerPoint, so the lengthy delay watching Acrobat 5 load is bugging the users. The workaround is to have Acrobat 5 open and minimized but that is not proving acceptable.

Actions:
- Searched the Registry and the only paths to Acrobat 5 occur in Adobe entries, none were found in application entries.
- Reinstalled Acrobat 5 w/PDF Writer feature - no difference
- Uninstalled PDF Writer and reinstalled - no difference
- Uninstalled Acrobat 5 and reinstalled Acrobat 5, all features - no difference

This has me bamboozled, never encountered it before on any other system.

If anyone has an idea on the cause or what to try next, please advise

Thanks for reading,

JP

Two things.

It is just Acrobat 5, or did you install the updates to 5.x (5.0.5? Can't remember that far back)?

Second, I am confused what you mean by this machine being a "robot". Does that that mean that it runs unattended?

Leonard

1. The install is from the Update CD and it is 5.05
2. The robot runs unattended. Set things up, load the hopper w/50 CDs and walk away. You still have to put the finished CDs in envelopes yourself though.

JP

Acrobat is not permitted to be installed on an unattended machine or a machine used by a multiple non-licensed individuals It is against the EULA (End User License Agreement).

Leonard
Adobe Systems

Leonard,

Having a robot attached does not make this an 'unattended machine', it means the user can walk away and have up to 50 CDs copied without having to individually load them in the tray and put them in the printer. See <http://www.primera.com/bravoII_disc_publisher.html>

The Acrobat 4 license was upgraded, which is why it has an "Upgrade" Acrobat 5.05 CD. The system is used to prepare the CDs, which includes graphics for the labels printed on CDs.

This usage can't possibly be outside the license otherwise everybody who uses a timesaving device like the Primera would be in violation. No way is the Adobe license that restrictive, and license issues certainly do not explain why it takes 15 seconds to load from inside an application when it is instant from the desktop.

Sorry - misunderstood how the "robot" fit in...

As to the delay, my only GUESS is that someone in the OS (not Acrobat) is intercepting each file open from Explorer. A Virus scanner perhaps that is doing "launch scanning", would be my first GUESS...

Leonard

From my experience, it still happens even no anti-virus program is installed.
General, it only happens to computers that have tons of software installed. It could be some software changed settings in the registry.

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..:: www.Mash <http://www.mashup.com>up.com ::. <http://mashup.com>

There is no antiVirus software on the system, my suspicions are also centered on the registry. I've been hacking at this all day and come up with one improvement, albeit fleeting.

At one point PDF files started opening instantly from Explorer and Power Desk but what seemed like the trigger turned out not to be, and have been unable to repeat this advance on later installs (several recoveries and Acrobat installs so far today)

It is almost certainly a Registry problem but this problem is consistent. Three restores and three installs now, and it stays the same.

I've even uninstalled and re-installed some applications in hopes that this would reset the Registry but so far w/o success.

If anyone has a cure for this, my hat will be off to them.

I encountered something like this a few years ago on W98SE: the long load times from Word were caused by installing direct from the 5.0.5 distribution CD. I was never able to prove it, but suspected that when loading from within applications, Acrobat 5.05 would go out to the web hunting for something. There should be a switch for automatic updates somewhere that can be turned off, but don't know if we ever found it.

Discovering the cure was an accident. The two users who installed from 5.0 CDs on their home systems had no problems with Acrobat coming up after printing.

The solution was 2-steps: Install from Acrobat 5.0 CD, restart and re-install from the 5.05 CD. As I remember, this caused Acrobat 5 to load a little slower in all cases but nothing serious.

I don't remember what was important about having 5.05 across all our systems, but there must have been some bugs that 5.05 corrected.

There should be something in the support archives but I don't remember Support ever coming up with a solution or an explanation.

If you don't have a 5.0 CD (I don't any more) maybe someone on the Forum can send you one. There should be no license issues, you already have that.

Update:

AlineGG:

From my experience, it still happens even no anti-virus program is installed.
General, it only happens to computers that have tons of software installed.
It could be some software changed settings in the registry.




This is a 'light' machine, all it has installed is Photoshop, Office 95, and Acrobat. The registry looks clean and is smaller than the registries on other machines.

wood cutter:

The solution was 2-steps: Install from Acrobat 5.0 CD, restart and re-install
from the 5.05 CD. As I remember, this caused Acrobat 5 to load a little
slower in all cases but nothing serious.




Took a while, but managed to locate a 5.0 CD and 5.0.5 update but found no difference in behavior.

Bootom line here is that Acrobat 5 launches swiftly from the icon, double click on a .pdf and using a browser.

Print to PDF remains miserable.

All of these installations are done to a newly imaged restore. When starting with the same base one would expect identical results from an Acrobat install but no such luck. Some differences can be explained by what options are chosen at install time, others cannot.

Since some of the installs are different, have kept one of them. It is the worst to date when printing to PDF, as it takes over 20 seconds to load Acrobat after printing. However, it is lightning fast when printing to Distiller. Go figure....

It's a solution we can live with, but it is hard to break habits and silent cussing occurs every time Print to PDF is selected.

Any ideas are still welcome, would love to learn why loading can take so long, and whether there is a cure.