Session Save Issue

[ST4423]

Hello everyone,

I’m reaching you about a problem saving my PDF XChange sessions.
I usually save my sessions regularly at work. However, for the past few days, I’ve noticed that they’ve been disappearing. More specifically, when I save them, it seems to work, but when I restart the software the next day, the session is gone.
NOTE: I’m referring here to sessions saved within the software itself; sessions saved as files still work fine. That’s actually what I’m doing for now to work around the problem.

Capture d’écran 2026-07-27 181443.png

Have you ever encountered this issue ?

My informations : PDF-XChange Editor Plus, version 10.7.2, build 400 - Windows 11, version 25H2, build 26200.8655.

Thanks in advance !

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, ST4423

First and foremost - If you can, I may suggest updating to the current latest version of the software (11.0.1) to see if it helps moving forward - some of the V10 releases had an issue with the speed of saving session data - which lead to this kind of issue if you shut down the PC less than ~20 minutes after exiting the editor. This has been fixed in recent versions, but could be what is affecting you

Beyond that, the defualt session data is stored in your device Registry. If you are in a roaming environment, or have some sort of third party registry cleaner/monitor, ensuring that our keys are whitelisted will be important to ensure they are not mistakenly removing them after they are saved. The keys in question are dependent on your installed version:
V10 or earlier:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Tracker Software
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Tracker Software

V11 or later:
Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\PDF-XChange
Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\PDF-XChange

Kind regards,

[ST4423]

Thanks for your response, Daniel !

Unfortunately, I can't install the latest version, since they're managed through a corporate portal.
However, I just saw that version 10.8.2.407 is available.
So I’ll try that; otherwise, I’ll contact my IT department with the license key information to see if there’s a problem on their end. That would be surprising, though, since it was working perfectly fine before, and I’m far from the only one using the software at the company.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, ST4423

If you are the only individual in a large managed environment, the issue could also pertain to a somewhat rare issue Windows itself has been having for years. A "Bloated" NTUser.Dat file in your user profile. This typically occurs in roaming or remote environments - but has been observed to occur very rarely in otherwise standard environments. This issue leads to a handful of issues - usually a generalized "slowness" of the system at large, but can lead to localized issues with saving changes to the registry, lost login tokens, and more.

It may be worth asking your It team to check the size of your user profile's "NTUSER.dat" file, and if it is larger than 15MB, they may need to lookup solutions online. When last i checked, the best solution was to simply delete and wholly recreate the Windows user profile.

Kind regards,

[ST4423]

Hello Daniel,

Thanks for the additional information. For now, I'm still running tests in the evening by shutting down the program and the computer.
After updating to a newer version (lower than 11), it seemed to work, but I’ve been having the problem again recently.

I do get the impression that it’s related to shutting down the PC right after closing PDF XChange, because that’s what I did on Friday, and that’s when my test failed.

What surprises me a bit more is that I’ve always done it this way without any issues so far (I save my sessions throughout the day and only close XChange in the evening, before shutting down).

Anyway, if I manage to clearly identify the problem, I’ll update this post.

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

HI ST4423,

Sounds good, thanks.

Kind regards,

[ST4423]

Hello everyone,

Just a quick update on my issue. So far, I haven’t heard back from the IT department (and I don’t expect to anytime soon).
That said, I can confirm two things:
• First: Saving a session and then quickly closing the application and shutting down the computer causes a problem.
I’d never had this problem before, though.
• Second: Yesterday, version 11.0.1 became available in our software center. So I rushed to download it and ran the test again that evening... But the result was the same.
- The session I saved is still there.
- But the session I saved before closing the application and the PC has disappeared.
So versions 11 and later don’t seem to solve the problem.

Kind regards,

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, ST4423

What you describe still sounds VERY similar to the inflated NTUser.dat issue I described before - while you are waiting for the IT team to get back to you, you can take a look yourself - just to get a quick confirmation if there is something to investigate on our end. All you need to do is open your file explorer and navigate through to your current account's "user" folder, for example, mine would be:

C:\Users\daniel

In that folder, scroll to the bottom and you may see a file called "NTUSER":

image.png

(If you do not see it in this folder, you may need to open your file explorer options and enable "show hidden files" form the view tab)
It *should* be around 15 MB or so in normal use. If it is larger (as I suspect), it is almost certainly the root cause of the issues you have been experiencing with saving sessions.

Can you take a look at that just to confirm the situation? I don't want to dismiss this before I know for sure that is the case, but if that is the case, it is decided a windows error, and there is nothing we can do from this end. In that scenario, the followup will be tasks your IT team need to perform if you are in such a locked down environment anyway - not something we can help with. So getting this quick check out of the way before they move on to another task would be ideal.

Kind regards,

[ST4423]

Hello Daniel,

Thanks for all this feedback. You're right, the NTUSER file in my user account is 69 MB.

image.png

I am waiting now for a response from my IT support team to see what to do next.

Kind regards,

[Sean - PDF-XChange]

Hi ST4423,

Okay, glad you have found the cause of the issue—hopefully you can get it resolved quickly. If you have any further queries for us then please just get in touch.

Kind regards,