Multiple Documents from Word to Acrobat 8.0 Standard

Hello. I've been converting multiple Word 2003 files into Acrobat 8.0 with no problems until lately. I applied the latest Acrobat patch and now the conversion has issues regularly.

I will open Acrobat
Click on the Create PDF button
Choose Add Files
I highlight all the files and choose Next
I use the Default size setting
Choose Merge files into single pdf
Click Create

It will start merging the files, then hang up on a file and say it can't convert the file - do I want to retry or cancel. Then it will keep going through the files and hang on more.

I've built a control group of 17 files I usually use. Sometimes it works fine and merges all the files. Other times it hangs on the second or 15th file or whichever file it feels like that time. It never hangs on the same file everytime.

I've uninstalled/reinstalled both Acrobat and Office 2003. I've isolated the patches and it doesn't matter which version of Acrobat I'm running.

I am getting SidebySide errors in OS, but not sure if those correlate here.

Finally, I do have a workaround - open each file in Word, convert that file to pdf and then once they are all converted - merge into one file. This is a lot of work, so I'd like to get back to the way it worked before.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!