On my fast, SSD-enabled machine, every bit of software runs quick except for Adobe Reader. It got to the point that I was just going to uninstall it and replace with another free reader.

Adobe Reader  XI (11.0.0) and some other versions tend to hang for about 25 seconds. And each time Adobe Reader starts up, it downloads a file from the Internet. This was an unacceptable situation. The only solution I found to stop the hanging and Internet access was a three-step solution.

1.  Go to Edit->Preferences->Updater and set to “Do not download or install updates automatically”

2. Go to  Edit->Preferences->Trust Manager and disable “Load trusted root certificates from an Adobe server”

3. Right-click on Windows Notepad and select “Run as Administrator” and File->Open and select “All files” (otherwise it will only show text files) and go to folder “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc”, select the file called “hosts”. If you can’t see this file then follow the more detailed steps here to view this file. Append this line (use some spaces, not tabs) without speech quotes:”127.0.0.1               acroipm.adobe.com” and then save the file.

This should work straight away, no need to restart the maching after making these changes. Just restart Adobe Reader.