Opening .pdfs from Web Sites

OK - this is more of an issue with MS than with Adobe - they are just working with what they have.....

NOTE: I, Hewitt, Adobe Systems, etc., etc. are not responsible if you totally noodle up your registry and make your machine no longer function.

I would seriously suggest you make a system backup as well as experiment on a machine that you don't mind having go belly-up before attempting.

Make all changes with tweasers - not with a shovel.

Start off - launch Regedit (start | run) type in regedit.

Under the Classes_Root you want to find out your AcroIEHelper object - mine says: AcroIEHelper.AcroIEHelperObj. This one has a CurVer (current version) of AcroIEHelper.AcroIEHelperObj.1

So, I goto AcroIEHelper.AcroIEHelperObj.1

Under there you want find the CLSID - mine is - {CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000}

Search on this... it will take you to where you want to go....
Under {CA8A9780-280D-11CF-A24D-444553540000}\InprocServer32 you will see the 'default)'entry. That will point you to the AcroIEHelper.DLL. Make the necessary path change.

I would also suggest you search on AcroIEHelper.DLL and see if there aren't any other places this needs to be changed.

Is there any other, easier, way to do this?

Try removing and reinstalling Reader 8 - when prompted, indicate you want to make it the default viewer for PDFs.

Seriously, I would advise against making the above changes unless 1) you know what you are doing 2) Don't mind reinstalling a whole bunch of stuff - up to and including the OS - if you make a mistake.

Thanks for the tip - the reg keys is what I was hoping for. In the end, I manually uninstalled Acrobat 5.0 and Reader 8.0, and reinstalled Acrobat 7.0 (and Reader 8.0). I didn't have install CDs for 5.0, and 7.0 is the latest we have. At least she can read .pdfs from the Web now, but they are still opening with Acrobat and not Reader, so I will use these suggestions to see what comes out.

My first question is - why does your end-customer need to read web based PDFs in Reader rather than Acrobat? Other than the load time, Acrobat is a superset of Reader. In that, there isn't anything that can be done in Reader that can't be accomplished in Acrobat.

If they are needing to do version/client side testing I would recomend something like VMWare. Where they can localize a standalone reader environment without having to build out a new machine to do so.

Holler if you have any additional questions.

Acrobat Users - We're not here to sell you anything. We're here to provide you with answers.