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Adobe Acrobat Gripes Acrobat produces the files read by the Acrobat Reader

Version 7 Trial Edition

February 8, 2006. I downloaded and installed a trial version of Acrobat 7. The first time I ran it, it said my 30 day evaluation period had ended.  

Windows XP

January 4, 2005. Computer had Windows XP SP1 with bug fixes as of September 2004 or so, Acrobat 5.0.5, Reader v5.x and Word 2000 SP3. It was upgraded to v6.0.3 of the reader. Somehow in the process Acrobat 5.0.5 was uninstalled. Also, a new printer was installed and all recent bug fixes (not SP2) were applied to Windows. 

To this, Acrobat 5.0.5 was re-installed but every time a PDF is created from Word it fails. The conversion steps work, the printing starts, a document is in the printer queue briefly then removed, and then Word loops forever and consumes all the cpu. This happens with multiple documents, even a new simple one with only a couple words of text. 

Installed three bug fixes to Acrobat 5.0.5. No effect on the problem at all. Installing the bug fixes does not change the version of Acrobat displayed in Help -> About though the documentation sort of makes it seem as if it should. Also, the bug fixes are sneaky, they don't end when they seem to end. That is, even after they shut down, Task Manager shows the underlying EXE file continues to run for a bit (less than a minute).  

The same thing happened with Acrobat 5 itself. The first bug fix failed to install because a file was in use. It turned out that after installing Acrobat 5, running it once and closing it, two Adobe processes remained running. Later runs of Acrobat v5 leave behind program aom.exe. 

At this point, I gave up and un-installed the Reader 6 and Acrobat 5 and rebooted for good luck. No good luck though. 

After installing Acrobat 5 again and the Reader 6.0.3, it still was not possible to create a PDF file from within Word. Just as before, Word loops and burns all the cpu. Clicking on the cancel button works and shuts down the PDF maker. 

Things also got worse in terms of the web browsers, which used to display PDF files using the Acrobat Reader, now they do so with Acrobat instead. I don't know how to tell IE to change this. I did tell Firefox to use the Acrobat reader to open PDF files, but it continued to open them in Acrobat v5 anyway. 

I want PDF files to open in the reader rather than in Acrobat so I right click on one and select Open With... The Acrobat Reader 6 was not even in the list of available programs. 

Acrobat v5 is no longer supported by Adobe. They are now up to version 7 and support it and version 6 only. 

January 9, 2005. The above problem happens when using the Adobe icon to create a PDF that sits in the Word toolbar. Avoiding the icons and creating the PDF by printing the Word document to the Adobe Acrobat PDF printer got around the problem. 

January 3, 2005. If you go to the main support page for Adobe Acrobat you are shown a list of the top support problems. There is no way to get a list of all the support problems for a specific version of Acrobat.  If you search, such as for the word "hang", the resulting search is not limited just to Adobe Acrobat but also includes all Adobe products. 

November 28, 2003. Acrobat v5.0.5 was working fine with Office 97 and Windows 98. When that computer was retired, it was installed on a computer running Windows XP and Office 2000 SP3. It failed to work at all. It hangs every time you try to create a PDF file from within Word 2000.  

Troubleshoot problems with Acrobat PDFMaker (5.0) 
Recommendations for Creating PDF Files from Word with Acrobat 5.0

The reame.html file in the root directory of the Acrobat CD says: 

PostScript® Driver: Installing Acrobat 5.0.5 upgrades your PostScript driver; the specific driver and version installed depends upon your computer's operating system. Acrobat 5.0.5 installs:
-AdobePS™ 4.5.1 for Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows ME.
-AdobePS™ 5.2 for Windows NT 4
-Pscript5.2 for Windows 2000

It says nothing at all about Windows XP, despite the fact that Acrobat 5.05 works with XP. It also says 

For last minute updates on the PostScript driver please see the Readme.wri file located in the Utilities\Drivers\WinInstaller 1.0.4\Adobe directory on your product CD.

But again, this file has nothing about Windows XP in it. Then, however, it says

Migrating an existing Windows 98, 98SE, ME, or 2000 operating system to Windows XP deletes the Acrobat Distiller Printer and PDFWriter. To correct this problem, reinstall the Distiller Printer and PDF Writer by using the Custom Install options Acrobat Distiller Files and Acrobat PDFWriter Files.[448122]

Could this be the reason that Acrobat hangs in Windows XP even though the computer was not migrated from an older version of Windows? To me, these instructions are not clear however. 

In the Acrobat 5 directory on the CD, there is a file called HowToInstall.wri. It has nothing about Windows XP at all. 

In the Add/Remove Programs applet in the Control Panel, there is a single entry for Adobe Acrobat 5. It has a Change button and a Remove button. Clicking on the Change button, produced the error show here. It had not been already un-installed.  Why does the Change button try to uninstall, if there is a Remove button?

The problem had to do with all the components of the software not being installed. If you do a custom install and force on all the checkboxes, it works.  

Installation

Acrobat v5.0.5 dated October 26, 2001. Starting the installation was harder than it should have been. The installation instructions are on the CD-ROM in the root directory in a file called ReadMe.html. The instructions say: 

1. Insure you have the necessary 120 megabytes of free space
2. Turn off your anti-virus program
3. Install Acrobat

You can't make this stuff up. The installation instructions say to install the product. Nowhere does it say what program to run to start the install (yes, if your asking, my CD-ROM drive is not set up for autorun). In these cases, I know to look in the root directory of the CD-ROM at file autorun.inf. However, the file only pointed to an icon file. It did not point to an executable program.

Now I review the dozen or so directories and one is called Acrobat 5. That directory contains a file called Install.wri. Again, this file, devoted to nothing but installing Acrobat, fails to mention the name of the program that you should run to start the install. It assumes autorun is enabled on the CD-ROM drive. Guessing wasn't too hard however, I ran setup.exe in the Acrobat 5 directory. Still, I wonder if I missed anything in multitude of other directories on the CD.

The boxed version of the product does come with a Getting Started booklet. It too fails to say which program you should run to get started. October 26, 2002.

I opted for a custom install. In deciding which components to install, clicking on each one brings up a brief description of what it is. There is a component called "Acrobat Distiller Files". The description provided when you click on it is "This component consists of Acrobat Distiller files". Perhaps Adobe has outsourced their documentation. 

The PDF Writer Files component was not selected. It sounded important so I opted to install it. Neither the Getting Started booklet nor the installation program gave any help in deciding whether to install this component.

The documentation said up front that installing Acrobat requires 120 megabytes of disk space. After selecting all components during the custom installation, the total space required was only 103 megabytes. It turned out that the 120 megabytes was correct.

FYI: A reader of this page found the advice here useful  Printer error messages when printing to Distiller printer. Basically it says that program Acrotray is required to run a boot time. September 4, 2005. 

FYI: I have read that if you are using Acrobat 4.0, you have to buy version 4.05 from Adobe for use with Windows XP. Acrobat 5.0 also works with XP.