PC performance analyser

The easiest way to see what's running is to go do a Ctrl-Alt-Del and open task manager as that will show you what process are running and what percentage CPU they are consuming.

I use one of the tools that comes along with the free Spybot S&D as it shows what is running at system startup and it allows you to amend the task list. Failing that you could always try the free free Nod32 antivirus system to give your system a once over but remember only one antivirus system runnning at a time is quite good advice.

I was taught personally to use the above remedy only as a last resort ! I use XP Pro (rather it uses me) do a daily (often 2) full (updated) AVG check, regularly go into (control panel/internet options, and delete all cookies, history, and delete files (many have laughed at this in the past, and that's their educated opinion, I've had no problems whatso'ver in nearly 4 years). Regular Disc cleanup too (in system tools) and a full on analysis & defragmentation (even when it says not needed) about once a month:

Fritz Von that's what I do, as well as regular burning of important data etc , onto CD, and binned from files etc, to keep things as mean and lean as possible, and it works for me innit.

It's system idle processes or Adobe Acrobat that are hogging the CPU when it is making a racket. I've killed my referencing program, and closed Acrobat, and that's shut it up for now, but it's no solution as I need to use that software.

Are the Acrobat tasks still consuming processor time when you're not actively doing anything in Acrobat?

When processing large files for printing Acrobat does consume a lot of processing time and I've also seen issues where background tasks had gone rogue and were continuing to consume processor time when they shouldn't have.

If the Acrobat processes are legitimate then you might want to consider changing the processor heatsink and fan to a more effective, quieter one.

My own machine (a 3.0Ghz P4) is pretty quiet in use but I run it without case fans as I've never needed them to keep the temperature down.

Yeah -- it seems to keep hogging the CPU even after the document has closed, but they are big for PDFs. Sadly, can't go opening the lid, as it's a work PC. It's just annoying to have the fans blasting away.

We're had a few problems with the Acrobat software on PC's and unix boxes, but that's been with documents with over 20,000 pages.

It might be worth checking on one of the Adobe forums for any similar problems - it might also be worth considering uninstalling and re-installing the software.

I've known Adobe to do this when opening PDFs as embedded Internet Explorer/Firefox objects. I've never found a proper way around it other than to always save the PDF and then open it in the "proper" Acrobat Reader app.

cheers,
Paul

Adobe have always been good to me too, innit.

Two things. (1) make sure you have the latest version of acrobat. (2) there is a bug with acrobat creating hundreds of temp files and then using lots of processor time trying to scan them all. Find your temp folder "documents and settings\<username>\local settings\temp" and kill everything in there that you can.

If you are using Mozilla Firefox then a quick look at the Plugin Acrobat Reader FAQ might give a few hints as to what is causing you grief.

I am using firefox, and the prob does occur with embedded pdfs. Cheers for the link.