Acrobat X and XI crash on Mac cured by waiting

Question

I just want to record this here in case it helps anyone else. I'm afraid that it is not well-structured or technically detailed but I hope that the bare bones might be useful to another user in the same situation. I know it sounds unlikely but it is what happened.
I had Acrobat X, installed with CS6, on my Mac. It worked fine till a couple of weeks ago when it abruptly stopped. This may have been after an OS upgrade or a product upgrade but unfortunately I am not sure.
The sympoms of the problem were that Acrobat, whether started on its own or through opening a PDF, would seem OK for a short period (~5-10s) then freeze. I would get the spinning beachball thing and there would be no recovering from it - I would eventually have to force-quit Acrobat. Once this behaviour started Acrobat no longer ran successfully at all - I had many attempts, and left it for a while (maybe 10 - 15 minutes) on several occasions but without effect. I looked for help online but didn't see anything which seemed to match my problem. I didn't yet consult Adobe TS but that was an intended step ...
I then saw Acrobat XI announced so I thought, great, I will just upgrade and leave the software crash behind. No such luck - the problem continued exactly as before. Annoying? Yes!
Then one day recently I attempted to start Acrobat and got the beachball as usual. I was then trying to download a very large video file and I left the machine running and never got round to forcing Acrobat to quit. By the time I returned to the Mac after work and a couple of  evenings out, Acrobat had been running for about 36h. When then I moved (or maybe clicked?) the mouse Acrobat popped up a question about did I want to upgrade certificates or something to that effect? (Sorry, I was so flummoxed that I didn't note it down or screengrab it.) I said no (I didn't really understand the question and do not as far as I know use certificates with Acrobat so it seemed a safeish bet) and it disappeared, leaving Acrobat running flawlessly. This it has been doing ever since, with multiple restarts of the programme and the OS in between - it does not seem to have the problem at all any more, no matter what I do to it, and I seem to have absolutely normal running restored. I am very pleased and relieved.
I know that this is a pretty irritating and vague account - sorry but it's all I've got. I am not necessariy advocating a 36h soaktest for all software faults; I have no idea what was really going on here, whether the certificates business was exactly as it looked, or was perhaps masking (or a side-effect of) something else, or what ... I just know that the very long wait, implausible though it sounds, seems to have sorted out my software problem, permanently. I post it here on the remote off-chance that someone with the same problem might see it, try it, and find it useful.
With best wishes to all, v
I I just ant to record this I

Answer 1

I have to update this for the sake of completeness and to avoid misleading people.
I thought that the above had sorted it out: however, the problem came back and was then completely intractable - I could no longer do anything with it at all.
In the end after trying quite a few other solutions I backed up, removed and recreated my user account. This fixed this problem, and a couple of other software issues besides. It was not without pain, and I would advocate great care and/or expert help in doing this, but it is nice to have my programs working properly again.
Best wishes to all
V