[SOLVED] Adobe Reader 8.1.2 Freezes Entire Computer

Under Vista, opening some PDF's can crash Adobe Reader 8.1 so badly that the entire computer can freeze up and only a hard reboot is possible. The conflict is threefold: Reader's GPU acceleration, Vista's UAC, and temp folder security.

I fixed it by adjusting the following in Reader's preferences (not all steps may be necessary):

• Automatic Default Page Layout
• Automatic Default Zoom
• Hardware rendering for legacy video cards
• PDF browser plugin, fast web view (irrelevant to this, though)
• Acrobat JavaScript
• Preferred Media Player (.i.e., set to Windows Media Player)
• Multimedia operations
• Verify signatures when opened
• Check spelling when typing
• External content (off by default, I think)

Most importantly, adjust the properties for AcroRd32.exe to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP2.

Cross-posted from http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3302386#post3302386

Working Around a Slow Laptop Hard Drive

As the owner of a Lenovo x41 tablet with a frustratingly slow 4200 rpm hard drive, the computing experience can be disappointing. Here are some tips, including maybe one or two that aren't obvious, to effectively workaround a slow laptop hard drive like mine. [Note: the links below are to how-to's for each step.]

1. Max out your RAM-- this makes the biggest difference, and if you do so it is safer to...
2. Disable the paging file-- this is a big disk operation that may not even be necessary for you
3. Store frequently created files on a separate partition of your hard drive: Temp files [Control Panel-System-Advanced-Environment Variables], Mozilla Cache, Temporary Internet Files, Java Cache [Java Control Panel], Downloads folder, print spool folder-- this helps to keep your main partition defragmented, which is even better for...
   
4. Smart Defragging by Layout.ini
   
5. Remove software that does background I/O activity or monitoring (resident antivirus, antispyware, network scanning), if you can get away with it. (See this post for a security solution.)
   
6. Disable the Indexing Service (this could probably go first!) [in services.msc]
   
7. Disable Last Access timestamping of files
   
8. Take advantage of your PC Card slot by getting the Delkin Cardbus UDMA CompactFlash adapter (Manufacturer Page / Amazon Product Page) and a UDMA CF card. My laptop's hard drive has a transfer rate of about 14 MB/sec, but a CF card in UDMA mode can sustain 40-45 MB/sec and far shorter access times.

More on using a UDMA CF card:

The 40 MB/sec transfer rate is impressive, but some aspects of the technology make it seem slow for frequent read/write operations. Storing a paging file or cache on it, for two examples, might not work very well. However, I have found the following do work well when put on a UDMA CF card:

• Microsoft Outlook .OST file
• Desktop Search Index (e.g. Copernic)
  
• Firefox (not the profile(s), though)
• Adobe Reader
  [You need a direct download so that you can specify the installation directory.]
• Pidgin with GTK runtime (again, profile should probably be kept on your hard drive)
  
• Other frequently used applications would probably also work well

This is just my casual observation, but indexes seem to perform well from a fast flash drive, but caches do not necessarily. Applications will start quickly from flash, since the reading is fast.

Adobe Reader 8.1 and Scroll Wheels

Items like this make me all the more amused that the abbreviation for this site is WTF. If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel which is set to scroll by a certain number of lines, Adobe Reader interprets that weirdly. The only workaround I have found is to set the global preference for scrolling to go page-by-page rather than N lines. In Firefox, you can override the settings by going into about:config from the address bar and setting sysnumlines to false and other settings as appropriate (more)-- if, you know, you use Firefox primarily.

I haven't found a mouse utility that successfully overrides for Adobe Reader only. Post something if you have.