OK, that helps us ...
Acrobat executes entirely as an application program. For better or worse, it has absolutely no ability to “lock” or “freeze” the entire system in the manner you describe even if it wanted to. Such behavior would be indicative of some lower level operating system or driver component misbehavior.
And unfortunately, since we haven't previously heard of this specific type of issue before with Acrobat or Reader printing, we can't offer you a specific fix.
I would ascertain that all Windows updates from Microsoft have been applied, that you have the latest updates for all network, printer, and video drivers, etc.
One other stab-in-the-dark would be to ascertain how many fonts you have installed. When you get counts in the thousands, a low level operation known as font enumeration could be yielding symptoms similar to what you report.
Sorry that I can't give you more helpful advice remotely.
- Dov