Has anybody noticed a big difference in the loading time for the Acrobat Reader 6 compared to older versions – not to mention the sluggish startup performance of version 7…

A friend put it right yesterday:

So, after poking around the Internet, I found that it is all the plug-ins that are enabled by default slowing Acrobat reader down.

After removing them, it loads instantly.

Here's how to do it:

• Go to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader – (replace the C if you installed on another drive, use "Programme" for german windows installations).
• Create a new folder called plugins_disabled.
• Move all files from the plug_ins folder to the plugins_disabled folder.

You're done.

Note – this disabled even such basic functionality like following URL-links in a document… maybe having a second installation of Acrobat on your machine with all the plugins will do the job…

A fast and slick PDF viewer in my browser would be even better…

This trick was originally posted but taken down by Darrel Norton – who also explained what all these plugins SHOULD do (in 0,05% of all cases, thereby slowing the remaining 99,95% of all startups)