Adobe Acrobat Reader

Security sandbox prevents MaxTo from accessing it

What's affected?

All MaxTo features are disabled for this application.

This is usually done for applications that crash when MaxTo attempts to interact with them.

Adobe Acrobat Reader (formerly Adobe Reader) is a tool for reading PDF documents.

This software has a sandbox feature which protects against viruses being carried in PDF files. This sandbox at the same time prevents other software installed on the machine from interacting with their window. If this shim is disabled while the sandbox is active, Acrobat Reader and/or MaxTo may crash when Acrobat windows are maximized.

This shim stops MaxTo from accessing Acrobat Reader window completely.

To make MaxTo work with PDF files, you can either:

  1. Use a different PDF reader. There are many alternatives, such as:
    • Most recent web browsers can read display PDFs natively
    • FoxIt Reader
  2. Disable the security sandbox

Disabling the security sandbox

Important! Disabling the Acrobat Reader's security sandbox is not recommended. By doing this, you accept responsibility for what happens to you, your loved ones, and your computer.

  1. Open Adobe Reader.
  2. Choose Edit, then Preferences.
  3. In the Categories list on the left, select Security (Enhanced). In Adobe Reader X or earlier, you need to instead select General.
  4. Disable Enable Protected Mode at startup.
  5. Restart Adobe Reader.

Disabling this shim

After disabling the security sandbox, you need to disable this shim in MaxTo.

  1. Open MaxTo settings, and click the Compatibility tab.
  2. Find the Adobe Acrobat Reader shim, and click it to open it.
  3. Click the toggle switch so it says Disabled.
  4. Restart the computer to make sure the changes are loaded.
In MaxTo versions prior to 2.0
  1. Open Notepad as administrator
  2. Open %ProgramFiles%\MaxTo\shims.xml.
  3. Find the lines reading <windowclass title="Adobe Acrobat">AcrobatSDIWindow</windowclass> (there are two), and remove them.
  4. Restart MaxTo.
Can be disabled

This shim can be disabled in MaxTo if you go to Options, Compatibility, and clicking on Adobe Acrobat Reader. You should find a toggle switch to disable it.

Note that shims should only be disabled if you have a legitimate reason to do so, and accept that disabling them may cause applications to crash.

What are compatibility shims?

Compatibility shims are our way of telling MaxTo that some programs react badly to being handled by some of MaxTo's functionality.

Each compatibility shim has a description text and a list of functionality that is affected. Some are small and do not result in loss of functionality, others cause MaxTo not to work at all (and the reason for the compatibility shim then is simply to prevent apps from crashing).

This list is kept up to date outside of MaxTo's release cycle, and will be updated automatically by MaxTo.