[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

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.

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.