Problem with Adobe Reader Plug-In (7, 8, and 9) on Windows XP

Question

We are experiencing a problem with the Adobe Reader plug-in and viewing documents hosted at our site.  The problem seems to happen with larger (over 5 MB) PDF files enabled for fast web viewing.  The problem never happens when viewing PDF image only files which are not enabled for fast web viewing.  The problem happens inside and outside our firewall, so it is not a firewall problem.  My organization has been hosting PDF files to the web at least all this decade, and this is the first time we have experienced and documented this problem on this scale.  We have ruled out the program creating the PDF file is causing the problem as I have eight sample PDF files created and modified by a variety of programs exhibiting the same issue.
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/945213-1jsnyF/
Adobe Capture 3.0 / Adobe PDF Library 4.0
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/948577-R7PH1d/
Adobe Capture 3.0 / Adobe PDF Library 4.0
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/959040-nPWEVJ/
Adobe Acrobat 8.15 / Abbyy Recognition Server
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/961608-uR6ukp/
PaperPort 10.0 / Abbyy Recognition Server
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/963955-8wBmHp/
Adobe Acrobat 8.15 / Abbyy Recognition Server
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/964418-Ingskm/
Adobe Acrobat 7.1 / Adobe Acrobat 7.1 Paper Capture Plug-in
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/963372-yhIUhW/
Adobe Acrobat 7.08 / Abbyy Recognition Server
www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/965399-4MBPMy/
Xerox WorkCentre 7345 / Abbyy Recognition Server
I can reproduce the problem with Internet Explorer 8.0.6 and Firefox 3.5.4 using Adobe Acrobat Plug-In 7.0.9.50 running on Windows XP Professional SP3.  Others have reproduced the problem with 8 and 9 versions of the plug-in on Windows XP Professional and Home.  Oddly, no one has been able to reproduce the problem with Unix/Linux versions of the plug-in or third party plug-ins.  This points to it being something wrong with Adobe Reader.
The problem is when I attempt to view one of the eight PDFs in my browser, I can severely stall or lock it up if I attempt to view more than the first page before the whole document downloads.  Sometimes if you wait it out, the browser will unlock, but not display text on the pages.  Sometimes if you wait for the whole document to load before switching pages, it works.  Sometimes you can start switching pages and the document will not lock up at all.  All eight documents can be viewed without issue if downloaded to the PC's hard drive and then viewed with Adobe Acrobat 7.0.
Can anyone point me to a technical document or reason why we would be experiencing this issue?  Even better, does anyone know the solution to these issues?
Any help will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I looked at a few documents. They appear to be scans and scans that have been OCRd. It is also likely they have not been optimized for page view. This means that the document has to be fully downloaded before viewed. That means the browser may appear to freeze until the entire document is downloaded. Downloading the entire document appears to be a reasonable way to handle these files.