PDF View (IE6)

[D Willett]

Viewing a PDF document with IE6, when I try to close the browser, it won't close. The browser freezes and has to be closed via the task manager.

Has any one had this before and is there a fix ?

[HansV]

Michael Shutt from Adventis posted the following in a newsgroup:

<hr>As many people have discovered, there seems to be a problem with the
Adobe pdf.ocx ActiveX control in IE. One way I have been able to
reproduce the problem repeatedly is to open two or more pdf documents
in new windows (i.e., hold down the shift key while clicking on a
hyperlink to a pdf document). Once you have the browser windows open,
you must shut them down in the reverse order that you opened them. If
you don't shut them down in this order, you will see your CPU spike to
100% indefinitely after closing the windows. On the surface, this
appears to be a threading issue.

After doing some investigation, it seems that you can solve this
problem by deleting the following registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTCLSID{CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000}InprocServer32
ThreadingModel=Apartment

By deleting this key, you are telling Internet Explorer that the pdf
control is a single-threaded component rather than apartment-threaded.
COM will do some extra work synchronizing the calls to the control's
objects which seems to solve the problem.<hr>

HTH

[D Willett]

Hans
Not sure about messing with the registry.
Does this have to be done only once do you think ?

[HansV]

Dave,

1. Yes, it only needs to be done once.
2. If you locate this key in RegEdit, you can export it before deleting it. If you want to restore the previous situation, you only have to open the .reg file you created.

[D Willett]

Hans
It didn't like that so I have restored it.

The browser went thru the motions of loading the doc, but came up blank.

I'll have a look on Google and see if something is there.

[HansV]

Two other things you can try (I haven't tested them)

1. In Windows Explorer

Select Tools | Folder Options...
Activate the File Types tab.
Locate PDF
Click Advanced (in Windows XP) or Edit (earlier versions of Windows)
Clear the 'Browse in same window' box.
Click OK twice.

2. In Adobe Acrobat Reader

Select Edit | Preferences...
Depending on the version, click Options or General > Options.
Clear the 'Display PDF in Browser' box.
Click OK.

[D Willett]

Hans
Don't ask me why !

I went back to the first suggestion and it now works ok !!

Thanks again

[SMBP]

Two things I have noticed that are negatives with the recently new Adobe 6 reader:

1) In general it takes longer to load than previous versions--suspect because of some of the rarely used (by most people) features like layering--can take about 60-70 seconds--loads quickly the second time you go to the same document in that browsing session.

2) If you're googling or search engining to solve a problem, and you click the link before you realize you have a choice between PDF and HTML, and try to close the window while it's loading so you can go to the quicker HTML (you just want the info and don't need the PDF format) you can get a freeze that wants to last a few minutes with 100% CPU use). You can shorten and stop (but not immediately) this by using Task manager's Application Tab>New Task>explorer.exe and open a new explorer.

I can't articulate the exact reasons, but in my hands Adobe 6 Reader's opening is slow because of the the added features and a minor annoyance, and will definitely freeze if you try to abort its opening before it finishes. I don't think that happened but can't remember for sure with the previous versions 4x and 5x.

SMBP

[JohnGray]

Looks like Adobe has got the Microsoft disease, in assuming that Lots of New Features means a Better User Experience, whereas it just means Bigger and Slower...

[SMBP]

John --

What I need to do now is take the time to take each feature one by one with help from Adobe's site and other sites or from someone who is immersed in this type work day to day and find out why they felt compelled to add them, and I have seen recommendations and I believe in the lounge on a couple threads that you can disable some of these features if you don't need them to make it zip up if you just want to read and search the pdfs. Somewhere there is a guide with some screenshots to these new features, and if I find it, I'll put it up.

SMBP

[JohnGray]

SMBP

I think this would be a public service, since even on my fast XP box it seems to take quite a time loading what look to be irrelevant features. I've never seen a "customisation" process...