Hi All,
We are currently using GPO and Active Directory to deploy Reader.
We also have a number of users that have manually installed versions of Acrobat Standard and Professional.
This leads to occasional conflicts between Reader and Acrobat.
Is there a way to modify the installer or GPO so that the existing Acrobat installation can be detected, and the deployment of Reader avoided?
Regards,
Chris P
Your best bet, to be honest, is to actually have Reader installed on all workstations - regardless of having Acrobat (Pro, Std, ProEX) installed.
In short, put Reader in your base system build then people add Acrobat as needed.
You use Da' Customizer to force which app is primary regarding the .PDF file extension and applications/pdf MIME type. For most shops this would be for Acrobat to be primary. In our environment we make Reader primary - for security reasons.
However - I can see some, narrow, situations where you want one or the other to be installed.
The easiest way to find out if Acrobat is installed is to check the Registry -
First, grab the entry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\9.0\Installer\Acrobat.exe*
and pull the Data (value) element. This info is the path to Acrobat.exe check to see if the file exists. If yes, odds are they have Acrobat installed.
* This path is not the only one you could use - there are many others. It is one of the few that can be used to identify a functioning copy. Also, I would stay away from entries in the Classes are within the registry for checking. Almost all of them can point to either Acrobat or Reader making your check indeterminate.
Keep in mind that the registry path is version dependent - meaning you will have to adjust your checking for each major version in your environment as well as keeping it up to date as new versions come out.
Due to this ongoing maintenance you may want to rethink your either/or strategy.
I hope this helps. If you have any questions do not hesitate to let me know.
Thank you.
Douglas Hanna is a member of the Production Print Technology team at Aon.
www.aonhewitt.com