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Making Acrobat and Reader play nice in XP

Griffon
Registered: Sep 30 2010
Posts: 1

I have been digging around but have yet to find a solution to a irritating issue we have at our company.
 
On some windows XP systems user have both Acrobat 6. They need this to work with a few specific documents.
They also have Adobe Reader 8/9 installed to read, well everything else.
 
The issue: Acrobat is really greedy
Whenever the users try to access a PDF file via the browser acrobat tries to take over. A lot of the files won't open in browser with acrobat, though they work fine with reader.
 
Short of removing acrobat altogether there dose not seem to be a way to let reader own the browser bases relationship or even the file relationship.
 
I have tried disabling anything and everything to do with Acrobat in the browsers (IE and FF). I have tried expressly setting the PDF file association to reader only.
 
Acrobat allays still grabs the transaction until it's uninstalled completely.
 
Can anyone confirm a working way to disable acrobat unless it's explicitly user sot open a file from within the application, or at least break it's constant attempt to cease the browser file association away from reader?
 
Thanks!

-Griffon

My Product Information:
Reader 9.3, Windows
gkaiseril
Expert
Registered: Feb 23 2006
Posts: 4307
Adobe recommends against having both Reader and Acrobat installed on the same system for version prior to version 9. They also strongly recommended not to have mixed version numbers of Acrobat and/or Reader.

The reason for these restrictions are based on the shared libraries used by Acrobat and Reader, they have the same name but different contents. There is the issue of properly setting up the file associations. There is the issue of TSR portions of Reader and Acrobat staying active after one closes the visible application window. And experience tends to prove this sage advice.

George Kaiser

brogers
Registered: Nov 6 2007
Posts: 9
George is right. Acro 6 isn't even supported anymore. However, things have changed a little: with X products (10.0) it's possible to use Acrobat 9 and Reader X. You can control the default viewer from the product preferences.

It probably won't work, but try installing Reader X and see if you can do what you want.

ben
DaveyB
Registered: Dec 10 2010
Posts: 70
Here's a possible solution:

*** MAKE A BACKUP BEFORE PLAYING WITH THE REGISTRY !! ***

Applications get their file associations from the Windows Registry. I assume you have a valid reason for specifying Acrobat 6 for specific files, so on the machines where Acrobat 6 is installed, change the entries under hkey_classes_root so that Acrobat no longer tries to open PDF files (the "everything else").

Now change your Acrobat 6 only files to have a different file extension (say FDP instead of PDF) and associate these files with Acrobat 6 only.

Acrobat should then only open the FDP files and leave the PDF files alone. You may also want to make sure that Acrobat 6 is cut out of the IE addons - I found a site that gives the registry values, CLSIDs etc here which may be helpful. Just be sure to leave access for the Reader to open them though.Hope that helps!

DaveyB

LiveCycle Designer 8.0
"Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration." ~~ Thomas Edison
"If at first you don't succeed, get a bigger hammer." ~~ Alan Lewis
"If the conventional doesn't work, try the unconventional" ~~ DaveyB

electroscribe_311
Registered: Mar 7 2011
Posts: 2
A number of people I work with have fully licensed installations of either Acrobat 9 Professional or Acrobat 8 Elements on their computers to make PDFs. An involuntary "patch" installed Reader X on their computers (without them requesting it). Suddenly, the computers either stopped making PDFs or could no longer open ANY PDF in either Reader X or the earlier versions of Acrobat. Once our tech people were convinced to remove Reader X, everything started working again. Is it correct that Reader X should NOT be installed on machines using earlier versions of Acrobat?

John Livingston
Publications Specialist