Whewn I attempt to patch Acrobat 9.0 with the new 9.1 MSP patch, I get the message "The upgrade patch cannot be installed by the Windows Installer service because the program to be upgraded may be missing, or the upgrade patch may update a different version of the program. Verify that the program to be upgraded exists on your computer and that you have the correct upgrade patch."
This very well may be that when the original Acrobat 9.0 installation was performed the installer cache files were not saved as well.
Saving the installer cache files is a check box towards the end of a manual installation and a setting in customizer.
It is there to minimize the installation footprint on tight systems. However, if you do not have them there performing an upgrade can be problematic.
Other things I've seen that can cause an upgrade installation to fail are:
Performing the upgrade under a different user or user grade than the original. For example, installed as Admin, upgraded as Power User, User, Guest. Or the Group/local Policy Settings were changed between primary install and update.
Performing the installation on a non-standard path.
Moving the installation files after being installed and miss resetting some registry keys (there are more than you think in more places than there should be).
Files/directories that were read/write/modify are now read-only.
A couple of solutions:
Try to perform a 'Detect and Repair' (under the Help menu)
Re-run the originial installation (Add/Remove Programs), but in modify mode. Make sure you install the cache files - just about any minor installation change will force a reinstall.
Make sure Acrobat & Distiller are not running (check Task Manager) before upgrading - a reboot here may help.
Uninstall, reboot, reinstall Acrobat, reboot, upgrade. Drastic, but usually works.
Please follow-up what worked, what didn't, other system info that may help with a diagnosis.
Thanks
-Doug
Douglas Hanna is a member of the Production Print Technology team at Aon.
www.aonhewitt.com