Adobe Reader 10.1.7 crashing with memory access violation

Question

After upgrading to 10.1.7 on some Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32-bit) terminal servers, we get Adobe Reader X unable to open any PDF. It launches for a brief second and then closes, apparently with exit code -1073741819 which I was able to get from running Sysinternal Process Monitor, since the Reader application and Windows give no indication or popup error about why the program crashed. I understand this exit code translates to 0xC0000005 "access violation". To make things more interesting, it seems to ONLY occur when accessing the servers via RDP, and may have somethig to do with the configured screen resolution or color depth for that RDP session. In some cases we are able to get Adobe to open for the same user opening the same PDF file without crashing by temporarily changing the RDP settings to a lower resolution, or a color depth other than 256 colors. I tried to disable protected mode at startup via local Group Policy in the registry, but that did not seem to help. We are running McAfee VirusScan Enterprise as well, though I have no indication that is a factor at this point. Any clues on what might be going on here or how to zero in closer on the problem?

Answer 1

From event log, when trying to access preferences.
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Application Error
Event Category: (100)
Event ID: 1000
Date:  16-05-2012
Time:  14:35:09
User:  N/A
Computer: AOCITRIX09
Description:
Faulting application AcroRd32.exe, version 10.1.3.23, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, fault address 0x000528ef.
For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.
Data:
0000: 41 70 70 6c 69 63 61 74   Applicat
0008: 69 6f 6e 20 46 61 69 6c   ion Fail
0010: 75 72 65 20 20 41 63 72   ure  Acr
0018: 6f 52 64 33 32 2e 65 78   oRd32.ex
0020: 65 20 31 30 2e 31 2e 33   e 10.1.3
0028: 2e 32 33 20 69 6e 20 75   .23 in u
0030: 6e 6b 6e 6f 77 6e 20 30   nknown 0
0038: 2e 30 2e 30 2e 30 20 61   .0.0.0 a
0040: 74 20 6f 66 66 73 65 74   t offset
0048: 20 30 30 30 35 32 38 65    000528e
0050: 66                        f