Alternatives to Acrobat Reader for PDFs on Windows?

[trancejeremy]

My computer can apparently no longer handle reading PDFs, ever since installing a new graphics card. (New to me, not actually new. It's a GeForce 3 TI, so semi-old)

I read them okay, but I close them, and it crashes or locks up.

All my games work, so I have no desire to screw around with video drivers.

So is there an alternative program to read them? (I would google, but that is largely useless these days)

 

[Zulithe]

Hey, come on! Google is still your friend and still a very valid resource. But I don't need google to answer your question...

OpenOffice is an excellent word processor, it can both read and save to PDF format. It is rather large if you are ONLY looking for a reader, but it is handy. I would recommend it, especially for the other features it has. www.openoffice.org

Secondly, I would recommend you try a few things before you drop Acrobat for good. Download the latest 6.01 version of Adobe Acrobat from www.adobe.com. Make sure you uninstall your current version first.

I don't see how this could be video card related... but maybe you SHOULD consider getting the latest video drivers if the problem pops up (especially in other programs) www.nvidia.com has what you need.

Here is a tip to get Adobe Acrobat loading/closing faster and maybe it will help. Navite to your C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader folder (or whatever drive it happens to be on) in it you will see a folder called plug_ins. rename it to plug_ins_old or some other name. create a new plug_ins folder. copy the files named 'EWH32.api', 'printme.api' and 'Search.api' from the old folder and place them in your newly created plug_ins folder. now Acrobat will work much faster.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Dang, it works...

Thanks, Zulith!

So, what are all the other things? And how can I get it to stop displaying those ads? (Sure, it's free, but I'm annoyed at having something hijack an application in which I'm working...)

 

[Psionicist]

Have you tried to install an older version of Reader, 4.0 or such?

http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=acrobat

 

[trancejeremy]

Hmmm. Are you sure about Open Office? I use it as my word processor, and while I know it exports as PDF, I don't think it can read them.

Anyway, like I said, the problem started when I installed the GeForce 3, so that's why I think it's video card related. And like I said, I don't want to update drivers as everything else works. As a long time Nvidia card owner, their drivers often can have problems. Using the most recent ones is often not the best move, in terms of stability and performance.

Lastly, Google really is worthless these days. It's taken over by ad bots.

 

[trancejeremy]

Using an older version won't work, because PDFs are not backwards compatible.

 

[Staffan]

Using an older version won't work, because PDFs are not backwards compatible.

And that sucks, because apparently Adobe doesn't think that Windows 98 and earlier are worth supporting anymore.

 

[gravyboat]

gsview is a nice little program for viewing pdf's, and its small.
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/gsview/

 

[Stormfalcon]

And that sucks, because apparently Adobe doesn't think that Windows 98 and earlier are worth supporting anymore.

Then again, neither does Microsoft...

 

[Zulithe]

Dang, it works...

Thanks, Zulith!

So, what are all the other things? And how can I get it to stop displaying those ads? (Sure, it's free, but I'm annoyed at having something hijack an application in which I'm working...)

Under preferences, go to "startup" and you will see an option for "show messages and automatically update" simply uncheck it and click okay and the ads are gone.