Adobe Acrobat Reader loads slow… speed it up!

OK, so I’m on my bill payment site and I click on the bill to view it.  The bill is in .pdf format, so Adobe Acrobat Reader begins to open… tick… tock… tick… tock… tick… tock… FINALLY after a mere 18 seconds, the page is displayed.  True, subsequent loads is faster, but why on earth does it take so long to open!

And so the time came to optimize my Adobe Acrobat Reader load time.

The reason Adobe Acrobat Reader takes so long to load is because of the hoard of API’s it loads.  Most of these are not needed and can be safely ignored.  So here’s my *magical* formula for speeding up Adobe Acrobat Reader load time.

• Unload any Adobe Acrobat Reader in memory.
• Bring up the task manager by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del.
• Sort by "Image Name".
• Kill all tasks named "AcroRd32.exe".
• 
• 
• Navigate to C:\Programe Files\Adobe\Acrobat X.X\Reader replacing "X.X" with your version number.  You will note a "plug_ins" folder.
• 
• Copy the "plug_ins" folder.
• Press Ctrl+C
• Press Ctrl+V
• 
• Navigate to the "plug_ins" folder.
• Select all files except:
• EWH32.api
• printme.api
• Search.api
• 
• Delete all the selected files leaving only the three noted before.
• 

And that’s all it takes.
My Adobe Acrobat Reader load time went from 18 seconds to 2 seconds!!!

Later
C