Has Adobe fixed the activation issues in Professional V9?

I am experiencing identical problems. I have Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.1.3 and have the precise serious of issues that you describe. It is a PITA and I need a fix that will not continue to waste my time.

Does anyone have a reliable solution?

-KG

I've decided to try to buy Acrobat V. 9 and see if that resolves the issue. If not, I'm going to find another solution for creating PDF files and simply stop trying to use Acrobat Professional. I will use other Adobe products, but I simply can't waste my time debugging a product that simply doesn't work - especially one as expensive as Acrobat Pro.

Not sure if I'll get to this until Jan 09. If anyone has another solution to this issue, I'd be extremely happy to hear about it!

SK

LOOK WHAT I FOUND (IT WORKED FOR ME): Turn off IE's internet protected mode OFF. see link below:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general/browse_thread/thread/b0be7c790c2fd396/0ad60b14767c6135?lnk=raot

"Last week when I tried to print a webpage as PDF file using Adobe PDF Printer
(installed with Acrobat 8 Professional) I got an error saying that Adobe PDF
creation cannot continue because Acrobat is not activated. I assumed that the
culprit was Acrobat's activation. Reminding myself that after first Vista
clean installation, when I tried to install Acrobat with Kaspersky Internet
Security 6 on, I restored my system back to previous state using System
restore because installer caused an error and stopped responding. So again I
formatted and went through another clean installation and installed the
software and tried to print the webpage (and any webpages) as PDF but it
doesn't work. I spent the whole weekend reading threads in many forums to
find out why the problem persisted and a possible solution. Today, for no
reason it came across my mind that I should install Firefox and I did. And
when I tried to print as PDF in Firefox I saw no problem. At this point I
figured out that the problem was not with Acrobat but with Internet Explorer.
Well, at a flitting thought, I turned off Internet Explorer's Protected Mode.
And what happens? Printing works like a charm with no problem at all.

Well, I would appreciate it if you read my whole story but my point here is
that I believe such features as Printing as PDF should be enabled with or
without IE7's Protected Mode. Perhaps I didn't have the guts to guess what
the problem was correctly but I think that there are a lot more people like
me out there. For all the trouble I went through, I think that Microsoft
didn't test the new Internet Explorer enough so incident like mine happens to
other people too as well. I don't know what the Protected Mode does to
Internet Explorer or what added benefit I get from using the IE with
Protected Mode (although I am currently using it) but if it is possible to
work with Adobe to find a solution to this, I hope that it's done soon and/or
if you were to provide me with a good assurance that I don't need the
Protected Mode to surf safely I wil be glad to turn it off to use Adobe PDF
Printer.
Thanks in advance for everything, and any replies or comments I appreciate
them. THANK YOU. "

I've read the other posts concerning this problem, all of which were posted in 2008. I see no response from Adobe or group members. Well, here it is. End of the first quarter 2009 and I'm having this same problem. Shutting down Adobe usually fixes it, but like the other entry, I can't take 30 minutes to reboot when this happens every time I'm trying to print to the PDF printer or do a document conversion to PDF. This just started in the last three or four months. I'm using Adobe Acrobat Standard 8.1.4. The error is the printer can't print because Adobe hasn't been activated. Activation on menu is grayed out. I'm not using IE. Using Mozilla. Problem happens from all programs. Please help!!!!!!!!!!

mlnfowler,
Are you having this problem after you updated to 8.1.4 or you faced this issue without 8.1.4 update as well.

I do believe it started with 8.1.3. Starting at some point following 8.0 the updates began becoming problems in and of themselves in the install routine. Finally, I've been able to get them all updated, but I do think it began with 8.1.3.

I'm in the same boat. Nothing works. Perhaps that's my issue, that I installed the Acrobat Pro 8.1.4 update. Vista won't even let me install the winsteng.exe printer driver, but of course I'm no Vista expert, and hate it like everyone else.

I've been creating PDFs every way there is for what, 20 years, but this takes the cake. Nothing I try works: can't use any printer and can't print to file. I guess I'll try uninstalling Acrobat and anything Acrobat that I can find on the hard drive and reinstalling it. This really ticks me off. I'm ready to buy another PDF creation tool.

And why isn't Adobe FrameMaker listed as one of the file types in the Acrobat drop-down within Acrobat. I'd never tried creating a PDF from a file from within Acrobat before but thought I would try that.

I was emailing my FM files to my work laptop that still has XP, but now my FM version is newer than the one supported at the office, so I can't even do that.

This is making me nuts and sucking up way to much time.

And of course Adobe said they'd help me for free if I upgrade to 9.0, which I don't even know will make the situation better. I don't think so. I asked why I would do that if I can't get 8 to work.

I got around the problem of activation error by opening the Task Manager, clicking on the Processes tab, sorting the processes alphabetically, finding the "acrotray" process and closing it. Then reopening Standard 8. That gets around having to reboot. When I try to use the conversion feature after this routine, it works fine.

Okay. That is very strange. I also deleted the "acrotray" process in Task Manager. Then I opened the file that I needed the PDF for, a FrameMaker 8 file, changed the printer to Adobe PDF Converter, chose "Save as PDF," and the PDF was created.

I don't know why deleting the "acrotray" worked, but I'm thrilled. I read that and thought why would that work. But before I started uninstalling Acrobat, I tried it. Thanks minfowler!

OMG, it looks like that acrotray work-around is going to solve the problem for me. THANK YOU THANK YOU. I have been reinstalling adobe acrobat for over a month now and was SO frustrated.

I actually just created an account for the sole purpose of thanking minifowler, that's how excited I am about finding some reasonable solution short of a complete reinstall every day and sometimes twice a day. Since the Court I practice in requires electronic filing, this problem was really eating into my productive time and I too was afraid that upgrading to 9 would not solve the problem.

Gosh, you're welcome. In my business we say, "I'd rather be lucky than smart." Such is the case with this. I don't know why it works, but it does. Oh, by the way, I went ahead and upgraded to Acrobat Pro 9.0. So far, no problem. Best of luck.

There is a relevant discussion at the following website:

http://searchtasks.answersthatwork.com/tasklist.php?File=AcroTray

It suggests that the acrotray.exe file be disabled at the Startup tab if you're experiencing trouble.

Disabling acrotray.exe does NOT work because Acrobat just creates it again after printing something.

After much searching around, I've finally discovered the answer and it works:

I made a script, so you have to open Notepad and insert this into it:

' ProcessKillLocal.vbs
' Sample VBScript to kill a program
' Author Guy Thomas http://computerperformance.co.uk/
' Version 2.7 - December 2005
' ------------------------ -------------------------------'
Option Explicit
Dim objWMIService, objProcess, colProcess
Dim strComputer, strProcessKill
strComputer = "."
strProcessKill = "'acrotray.exe'"

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
& "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
& strComputer & "\root\cimv2")Set colProcess = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * from Win32_Process Where Name = " & strProcessKill )
For Each objProcess in colProcess
objProcess.Terminate()
Next
WSCript.Echo "Just killed process " & strProcessKill _
& " on " & strComputer
WScript.Quit
' End of WMI Example of a Kill Process

then save this as a "KillAcrotray.vbs" file onto your desktop or somewhere. Then drag this onto your START button. You run this right before you are going to print and it will then allowed you to print. I've been searching for weeks for this. I even upgraded from Acrobat 7 to Acrobat 9 while running my new laptop on Vista. Nothing worked.... until this.

If it doesn't work on your machine, please don't ask me to help you because I don't know anything about computers. I only found this script on the internet for stopping something something else and I cannabilized it to stop acrotray.exe I hope this is able to help someone else.