Acrobat won’t start – the solution
December 10th, 2004
If you find that you can no longer open PDFs, it may be because Acrobat has created so many temp files on your PC it can't create any more.
Acrobat 6 creates lots and lots of temp files named Acr<hex number>.tmp in Documents and Settings\<user name>\Local Settings\Temp
or in Windows\Temp
The problem is, it doesn't clean these up when it's finished with them. The result is thousands and thousands of little temp files. Each new temp file gets an incremented number in its name, but when Acrobat reaches AcrFFFF.tmp it sticks and can't create any more files. When this happens, Acrobat won't work. If you open a PDF from Windows Explorer, Acrobat hangs on the splash screen.
To solve the problem, just delete the temp files.
This is an incredibly shoddy bit of coding, I'm amazed Adobe let this slip out. Adobe, hang your heads in shame!
Note:
If you have reached AcrFFFF.tmp it means you have 65535 files to delete. Windows Explorer is not designed for seleting or deleting thousands of files and you'll find it difficult.
Much better to use a DOS command window. Or, if you have SFU 3.5 installed, navigate to the appropriate directory and issue the command:
rm Acr*tmp
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