FNPLicensingService.exe : What is it and can I delete it?

by Oscar Sodani

December 8, 2006

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

If you have recently installed Adobe Acrobat 8, you may have noticed that it launches a process called FNPLicensingService.exe every time you start up your PC. This program is a necessary licensing utility that Adobe uses for the Acrobat software.

People have tried many different methods to disable the FNPLicensingService, however, Acrobat WILL NOT RUN without this service.

If you disable the service by using the Services Control Panel (services.msc) or msconfig, Adobe Acrobat will simply re-enable it without asking.
If you attempt to rename the files or folders, the Adobe Acrobat software will just create a new folder with the necessary files.

Our Advice

Set the FNPLicensingService.exe to run on Manual. The program uses up a few megabytes of memory while Acrobat is running - however, once you close Acrobat, the active process should release from memory. And by setting it to Manual, it won't run on startup. Here's how:

Click on Start, Run, then type services.msc and press Enter.
In the list, find the option for FLEXnet Licensing Service and double-click on it
Click the Stop button to Stop the service.
Change the Startup Type option to Disabled.
Click OK.

And if you haven't already, check out the free Foxit Reader - an excellent alternative to the Adobe Reader software. I also recommend a very cool book called PDF Hacks: 100 Industrial-Strength Tips & Tools, so that you can really take advantage of all the cool things that PDFs can do.

Have a question? Need help? Get free, friendly person-to-person help with your computer questions or spyware questions in our help forums!

[ Back ]
More Tutorials
More Running Processes