Back in the old days when I was still a Windows user, a light-weighted and fast PDF reader was vital given the amount of PDF notes we received daily at university. FoxitReader was my best friend then. FoxitReader was almost perfect but not there yet especially when it came to printing. Certain graphics and PS text couldn’t be printed properly, instead you would get black boxes. Well, I reluctantly installed Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 just for the purpose of printing.
And well, what did I got in my XP box after I installed, “AcroRd32Info.exe” situated idly and happily in the background and eating my memory resources whenever I open a folder containing PDF files. And no, I didn’t open a single PDF file in it. I have a habit of checking my Process Manager whenever I install a piece of new software. Well, I went through the Adobe forum as well as google search engine to find out more about this behaviour.
Well, AcroRd32Info prefetch PDF documents into memory (aka preloading). I was puzzled why Adobe Reader can load faster than my champion FoxitReader. Adobe Reader cheated! Well, I fully understand that Adobe wants to improve access time for its reader. But setting up a background prefetcher in explorer and not to mention its running without the owner permissions is extremely unsightly for a giant like Adobe.
~* The Fix *~
Well, initially I was pretty disgusted by AcroRd32Infor.exe behaviour, I did it in a brute way:
- Open Explorer, browse to Program Files/Adobe/Reader 8/Reader (the reader version is depend on the version you installed on your computer : 8 or 8.1 etc)
- Locate AcroRd32Info.exe
- Rename it to un_AcroRd32Info.exe (or whatever the name you are pleased with)
Voila, you get rid of the nasty prefetcher. Do this whenever you upgrade/update your Adobe Reader.
That’s pretty inelegant way of doing thing. After I switched to Ubuntu, I found a more elegant way to fix it, of course by exploring Adobe Reader for Linux again.
- Open Adobe Reader 8.1.
- From the main menu, choose Edit » Preferences.
Short-cut: Ctrl + K - Select the Internet categories in the menu list then untick “Allow fast web view” & “Allow speculative downloading in the background”
If it still doesn’t gone from your system after a reboot, just use my brute force method 
Cheers,
Posted by ralliart12 on March 13, 2008 at 12:07 pm
I do not have “AcroRd32Info.exe” in my background (& no, I didn’t explicitly disable it); I have “acrotray.exe” in my background though, which consumes 8MB of memory…still pisses me off…
For those who just wanna VIEW PDF files, u can try Sumatra PDF viewer:
http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
It’s a single exe, & even lighter than Foxit. Comes with shortcut keys that are very similar to Gmail & Google Reader.
& oh yah, it’s open-source, if u r into that sorta thing…
Posted by Anonymous on March 13, 2008 at 3:49 pm
LOL. My information is outdated I presume.
Anyway, Sumatrapdf is a reader and nothing more. You can’t highlight or select text which is a major concern for lots of people.
Posted by name on September 1, 2008 at 9:44 am
Hello!,
Posted by J on December 9, 2008 at 11:17 pm
It may be a little out of date but thanks for the head up.
Posted by mike on December 15, 2008 at 8:38 pm
I’ve ditched acrobat all together hogs alot of ram. Install foxit pdf viewer, its small and fast.
Posted by ralliart12 on December 15, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Hi mike, I dislike Acrobat’s memory footprint too, but may I know what do u use to CREATE .pdf files?
Posted by Eric C on April 27, 2009 at 6:11 am
I agree process hogs should not be allowed to pig the resources without my knowledge.
I find Process Lasso and Process Guard very good at reigning in the offenders.