I have been experiencing slow downs on my desktop computer for a while now. I tried troubleshooting wizards and other things to no avail Then I came across this article discussing high resource use by Acrobat Reader even while inactive: Adobe RdrCEF.exe High CPU usage on Windows 11/10.

I tried the fixes suggested in that article and nothing changed. I vaguely having a similar problem maybe 8-10 years ago and switched PDF readers so I finally decided to use the solution I used back then. In my experience, Adobe products have always been resource hogs.

1. Uninstall Adobe Acrobat completely.
2. Install Foxit Reader (free version).

System Requirements

• Operating Systems
• Recommended Minimum Hardware

Platform Support

Windows

• Windows 8
• Windows 10
• Windows 11

macOS

• macOS 10.14, macOS 10.15, macOS 11, or macOS 12

Android

• Android 4.4 or higher (For users utilizing the AIP capability, Android 6 or higher is required)

iOS

• iOS 11 or higher

Linux

• Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 ~ 16.10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.x (64-bit) ~ 7.x
• SUSE 12 Linux Enterprise Server
• OpenSUSE 13.2
• OpenSUSE Leap 42.x

For users utilizing the Active Directory Rights Management Service, the following systems are supported:

• Ubuntu Desktop 14.04 ~ 16.10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6.x ~ 7.x
• OpenSUSE 13.2
• OpenSUSE Leap 42.x

Citrix

• Verified as Citrix Ready^® with Citrix XenApp^® 7.13

Et voila! Slowdowns gone immediately.

Definitely worth trying if your seeing high resource usage or slow downs and you have Adobe Acrobat installed. As always, YMMV.

Full disclosure: I do not have any business or financial links at all to Foxit Reader. I simply found it better the last time Adobe was causing problems and I thought my solution might help others.