Adobe Acrobat Reader X crashes when attempting to print on LAN network

I created a network of 30 computers for an office setup. I installed Adobe Acrobat Reader X on all PCs that have Windows 7 running on it. I didn’t test it as I thought it will work normally. But the next day office manager called me to check a problem that occurred in their systems. Whenever anyone tries to print any document from Adobe Acrobat Reader X, it just freezes. It happens on every PC in the system. Does anybody have this experience? Does anybody know how to solve this problem?

I have discovered after long analysis that Adobe Acrobat Reader X is unable to take load of printing orders sent by multiple systems simultaneously. In your case the number of systems is too large. 30 PCs are enough to freeze Adobe Acrobat Reader X when print request is sent. I tested this error on a LAN network of just 4 PCs. I used different hardware VPNs and subnet masks. But the printing process would always freeze Adobe Reader X. I used multiple pdf files for testing. The pdf files varied in size and content. I thought this problem occurred only for files with large size, but it occurred for even small size filed. Many times if the pdf documents consist of multiple images, then chances of such error are more.

According to my research the protected mode in Adobe Acrobat Reader X is location aware and crashes when the subnet mask is applied. By applying the subnet mask, the actual location of the PC is kept hidden, so maybe Adobe Reader X is confused about the location of printer with respect to your system leading to freezing of the software. So if this is the case, I think another application or maybe another Windows core process consumes resources to track down the original address of printer in a network. This heavy consumption of resources must be freezing Adobe Acrobat Reader X.

I solved this problem that came in my network by disabling the protected mode. Also disable the pop-ups suggesting one to update their Adobe components for better performance. I suspect them to be a part of this problem.

Disabling the protected mode increases the chances of bringing in the malicious threats in your system. So I devised a way to keep the protected mode ‘On’ but also to detect the right address in the LAN network. I edited the registry file by adding these lines of code in it.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\10.0\FeatureLockDown]
"bProtectedMode"=dword:00000000
I still haven’t discovered any other problem has been caused. But this helps a lot.

I sent my problem with all the specifications of my system and printer to Adobe. After days after long process of analysis, they replied me saying that one of the components from the updated version was not compatible with the drivers running my printer. I use hp c4780, So they provide me a link to drivers list for my printer which were compatible with Adobe Acrobat Reader X. You can too send your query to Adobe.

According to my experience in networking, I can tell you that this problem is being caused due to use of shared printer system. If you have an IP based printer in your network then I suggest you to use Windows 2003 SBS server and share the printer with my XP Pro workstations. With this configuration, you can add IP port and printer driver directly to my workstation. I hope that if you try this system, the problem can be solved. In this system, the print command will be first be sent to Windows 2003 SBS server. The command and the data will be then analyzed by XP Pro workstations. It will schedule the Printing process sent from one computer according to print commands sent by other systems in network. When it thinks that conditions and resources are in favor of your command, it will proceed with printing process.

This sort of problem can be avoided by using auto-duplex printing setting. In his setting, a multi-user system can be easily managed. The only problem is that the settings for this system are much complicated. To add to the trouble of configuring systems in this setting, every computer will have different set of settings. So if you need to configure network for introduction of new printer, scanner or a PC, then you will need to alter the settings of every PC in the network.

I too had encountered this problem a long time back. Tried everything but nothing helped. Later my colleague found out that, this is caused due to corrupt user profile. She renamed all the profiles to username_OLD and the problem was solved. The usernames were changed after some days and still no problem has come.