Why does Adobe Acrobat scroll so slowly, and what can I do about it?
I often am forced to view long PDF documents either in browser or out of browser. When I'm forced to use such documents, it's always frustrating, because whenever I scroll the document, the viewer "stutters" -- and it's at least some 30 seconds later before Acrobat relinquishes control of my mouse pointer. (I've found that if I Alt-Tab out of Acrobat, everything finishes scrolling instantly, and I get my pointer back)
I suspect that the issue lies in not having the world's greatest graphics card in this laptop (an NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160), but it scrolls so slowly that I don't think this is just a hardware problem.
Has anybody had this problem before? What does one do about it?
EDIT:
Interestingly, this only seems to occur if I use the "middle button scroll" on the laptop keyboard; if I plug in an external USB mouse and scroll that way the problem seems to go away.
EDIT2:
Replacing Adobe Reader with something else is not an option. Using alternative readers has bit me in the a** enough times that I don't want to deal with it. Unless it supports reading anything in a PDF that Reader X does, I'm not interested (and no third party reader does so).
More to the point, this occurs in other applications on this machine than Adobe Reader -- it's just that in Reader this problem is most noticeable. Using Foxit Reader, for instance, does not change the problem; it's still just as poor there as it is in the first party tool.
The above suggestions, while comprehensive, were not the culprit when I encountered this a few years ago (and just now). I just remembered how to fix it....
Click on View > Page Display > Enable Scrolling
@Jeff also suggested to update your drivers, it might help a bit if they were very outdated.
@Mehrdad's suggestion is just wrong, power-save is unlikely as external USB mouse goes just fine.
And this is what the documentation says:
Check 2D Graphics Accelerator (Windows only)
(Appears only if your computer hardware supports 2D graphics acceleration.) When selected, allows hardware acceleration usage when the first document is opened. When deselected, hardware acceleration usage starts after the first document is opened. This option can slow startup time, so it is unselected by default.
So, in short, it just starts the hardware acceleration earlier which does not have any effect on your scrolling.
Also, you don't want to enable smooth scrolling, as this results in more frames and thus worse performance.
So, here are my suggestions which can improve performance assuming the latest version Adobe Reader X:
Under Edit > Preferences:
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Page Display > Smooth Text > None
Making your text more beautiful takes time, it might have an impact on your performance.
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Page Display > Enhance thin lines > Unchecked
Similar to text, this might have an impact too.
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Page Display > Use 2D graphics acceleration > (Un)checked
It's essential to try both states here, who knows your CPU is faster and thus software-based is faster.
If you uncheck this, you might want to uncheck Smooth line art and Smooth images too.
You might want to learn to use your reader different, for example, run it in full screen mode like this:
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Go to View > Full Screen Mode or press Control + L.
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The default is to show the full page, other views can be accessed by Control + 0 - 5.
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Use PgUp and PgDown (or Space) to jump instead of scroll.
Another bunch of specific solutions are listed in this thread, but I doubt if they can help you...
If your problem in Adobe Reader isn't resolved, you could try an alternative reader like Foxit.
EDIT: Interestingly, this only seems to occur if I use the "middle button scroll" on the laptop keyboard; if I plug in an external USB mouse and scroll that way the problem seems to go away.
Interesting, try to see if you can update the drivers for your touchpad. Also check for any odd settings for it.
It is a branded touch-pad (check under Device Manager) can you mention to us which one?
Sounds like your graphics card believe it or not. Your card seems to be having trouble keeping up. You can try updating your graphics drivers or trying a new video card. Adobe has a smooth scroll which may cause issues with some older cards especially.