Adobe Reader 11.0.07 freezes for ~8 seconds when opening a PDF file
I had absolutely same symptoms as described above (8 sec freeze with disabled Internet and 1-2 sec with Internet). after trying most of the methods discussed here (disabling security mode in Settings and via regedit, reinstalling Reader, rebooting), I was experimenting on disabling plug-ins (.api) one by one to see if the problem was connected with one of them, and at least in my case it was!
in the end I found out that if you disable the Weblink plugin (see a how-to below), everything becomes normal! (although, alas, you loose the super-ability to follow web links from a PDF document — however, in most cases you can just copy the URL and paste it into your browser manually)
to disable the plugin you need to:
- shut down all running instances of AcroRd32.exe
- go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 11.0\Reader\plug_ins\" folder
- cut the file "weblink.api" and paste it somewhere outside that folder (e.g. in a new folder such as "(...)\Reader\plug_ins_BAK\") — or simply rename the file changing the extension to get something like "weblink.api.bak".
then try to run Adobe Reader.