Adobe Reader doesn’t open in Windows 8 at least not on every attempt. I have uninstalled and reinstalled Reader and have yet to see a difference. I also am not sure what causes it.
What I do know is that Reader is opening in the background but is not being displayed on the screen. Acrobat does not have these issues. In this particular instances the Windows 8 copy is sitting in VMware Vsphere and being accessed via remote desktop.
Here is what you do. You hit ctrl-alt-delete if you are in windows 8 but if you are accessing it from a remote desktop you hit ctrl-alt-delete to get to the task manager. In the task manager you may have to click “More Details” in order to see the entire list. Once you do that you need to END TASK one each and every Reader in the list.
Like I mentioned earlier, Acrobat doesn’t have this issue. With Reader becoming so large and bloated maybe it’s time to start looking for something else. The built-in Reader for pdfs in Windows is just awful. I won’t consider that an option.