Adobe Reader X (10.1.2) crashes whenever you try to print with event ID 1000 errors

Problem

You’ve been getting complaints from your users that Adobe Reader X (10.1.2) crashes whenever they try to print from their Windows 7 32-bit workstations.  As soon as the users try to open the print window, Adobe shuts down.

Reviewing the event logs, you see event IDs 1000 and 1001 logged in the Application logs:

Event ID 1000 Error

Faulting application name: AcroRd32.exe, version: 10.1.2.45, time stamp: 0x4f02e382
Faulting module name: AcroRd32.exe, version: 10.1.2.45, time stamp: 0x4f02e382
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x0005e985
Faulting process id: 0xe18
Faulting application start time: 0x01ccdebd99cc2c22
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Reader\AcroRd32.exe
Report Id: e3486582-4ab0-11e1-a248-005056be608e

Event ID 1001 Information

Fault bucket 2778652943, type 1
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: http://oca.microsoft.com/resredir.aspx?SID=20173&iBucketTable=1&iBucket=-1516314353&BucketHash=562c3c70ba40be4a22c1f7dcbd9cc36c
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: AcroRd32.exe
P2: 10.1.2.45
P3: 4f02e382
P4: AcroRd32.exe
P5: 10.1.2.45
P6: 4f02e382
P7: c0000005
P8: 0005e985
P9:
P10:

Attached files:
D:\Users\Miranda\AppData\Local\Temp\WER7845.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml

These files may be available here:
D:\Users\Miranda\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_AcroRd32.exe_273bd88dc0e0dbfc9662d58705c9fe14cef6039_086e9170

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: e3486582-4ab0-11e1-a248-005056be608e
Report Status: 0

Solution

With a bit of research and weeding through threads that had solutions such as checking the printer shared name, I finally found the solution here: http://forums.adobe.com/message/3499925

This problem is apparently caused by Adobe Reader X’s Protected Mode at startup feature shown here:

While disabling this feature is probably going to be a security vulnerability, I have 50+ virtual desktops that I need to fix before the weekend ends so I went ahead and applied the following registry change to the master image, recomposed my VMware View virtual desktops and was on my way:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\10.0\FeatureLockDown]
"bProtectedMode"=dword:00000000

Once the above registry key is added, the Preferences window should look like this:

This is another one of the many times I’m thankful that I’m working with linked-clones in VMware View.