Carl Tyler's Blog

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Remember when Adobe Acrobat used to load in sub second times? So do I, and up until today it had always loaded that way. Then this week I decided it was time to format my laptop and go from Windows 2000 to Windows XP. I'm not totally sure I'm happy with that decision but I'll live with it (I loathe the new Start Bar). So getting my apps back up to date I downloaded Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 6. What is with Adobe applications and all their plugins? This transition felt like moving from Ami Pro 3 to Word Pro 96, things had really slowed down. After a bit of googling on the web, I found these really simple steps to get rid of most of the plugins and get Adobe loading again in a reasonable time.

1. If Adobe is running, close it
2. Find your Adobe Reader program directory, typically C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader
3. Create a new folder with whatever name you want, something like "disabled_plug_ins"
4. Now move (not copy) across all the files and folders in the "plug_ins" folder with the exclusion of the following EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api, to your new folder (disabled_plug_ins). There should only be these 3 files in the plug_ins folder.

Now you should be able start up Adobe Reader quite a bit quicker than you did previously. If you find you have a PDF that was using one of the plugins, then just move it back across to your plug_ins folder.