Adobe reader keeps crashing when opening pdf

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What should I do if Adobe Reader crashes, stops responding or if I have other problems opening PDF documents using it?

Sometimes there are problems viewing large PDFs in Adobe Reader. PDF documents can take a while to open and when scrolling, Adobe Reader can freeze and, occasionally close down altogether.

The behaviour is not consistent but if you encounter it with a file you're using, the following suggestions will help you to view the page more easily.

Click on Edit > Preferences and then in the left hand pane select the General option (in Acrobat Reader X) or the Security (enhanced) option (in Acrobat Reader XI) and untick the option "Enable Protected Mode at startup" then click OK

This reduces the time it takes for Adobe to launch and should address problems with the application appearing to "freeze" when you first open it, but if you still have problems, try:

Click on View > Page Display > Enable scrolling

This turns off the little page preview which appears next to the scroll bar if you scroll through the document by clicking and dragging. This preview can cause a noticeable lag, especially if you drag a long distance.

Choose File >Save As and choose Computer
Save the file in C:\Temp\
The file will be deleted automatically the next time the computer is shut down but you can also delete it manually when you have finished with it if it contains confidential information

go to the location where your PDF file is stored
right-click on the file and choose Open with
if Google Chrome is shown as one of the options, click on it to open the PDF
if not, click on Choose default program…
click on Browse. and go to
C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application
click on chrome.exe and then click the Open button
if you want to use Chrome to open all PDFs in future, leave the option Always use the selected program. ticked (or you can un-tick it if you just want to try Chrome before setting it as the default)

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Adobe reader keeps crashing when opening pdf

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