Problems with Adobe Aren’t Adobe’s Problems?
Equi Sumo, on the new problem with Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1:
I cannot say I have come across this actual problem myself, but have just been through a nightmare couple of weeks with MSs security updates not installing properly. The symptoms were so similar to what you described, that I thought I’d pass the details on.
Uninstalling or rolling back seemed to just make things even worse for me as well. Fortunately I had a back up that wasn’t too old, so tried to use that, but XP had become so unstable, that Acronis couldn’t run and even the /repair option on reinstalling Windows failed. Ended up vapeing the lot and doing a clan install, followed by Acronis to get the back up back on. I had it on a 2GB flash drive, but for some reason that kept coming up as no OS - ???
Drive too big to be recognized by my BIOS or something??? Will have to work that out when I get chance…
Anyway, after an 80 hour headache, I sorted the mess out into THREE completely unconnected problems - Sods law, No wonder it wasn’t making sense - What’s the chances of three concurrent problems?
The problems like the Adobe ones, all came down to my anti-malware. In particular it seemed to be Spybot - SD doing exactly what it is meant to do - It was stopping some things being changed on my system. Unfortunately it was failing silently. MS confirmed the updates had been successful, but they hadn’t been installed correctly. Some of the effects were nothing short of bizarre - Like the start Menu would come up, but actually clicking on anything froze the system so hard, that it could only be relieved by pulling the power plug.
Now I don’t know how far to go in installing programs - When they say to quit all other programs, it seems like the main ones to quit are your anti-malware programs. That is just giving free rein to any malware hidden in the install though.
Incidentally, when the MS security updates first went it, they changed Task Manager to a MUCH more limited version. No way to shut the computer down from it for one thing. Not only that, but there is no apparent way out of Task Manager itself either (there’s only one way, right click on the tiny green icon at the bottom of the screen). At first, I thought it was something to do with my installation problems, but it has also appeared on a neighbour’s computer who updated the same night (he has no problems with his system though). About three days later, when I updated my old back up, it did not change Task Manager that time, or since… However, my neighbour is still stuck with his limited version of TM and there’s no updates I’ve been able to find to get the old functionality back - Have you heard anything of this?
“Greenarrow1″ shifts the blame to Microsoft…
Since you did not denote whether this is Windows Vista or XP Pro I can say this Vista has a problem with Adobe products. Microsoft also has a problem releasing codes to vendors and/or vendors having problems creating upgrades for use with Vista. I am not going to rant on Vista but due to areas of this OS having flaws which have not been corrected vendors are having a hard time trying to upgrade their programs to work with Vista. There is also the partner issue which MS seems to be adamant about.
Honestly, after testing Vista from the gate I feel this OS is not ready and should have never been released until it was stable enough to support the software that vendors have so the user could have a operating system experience without all the problems that are arising. MS failed to release proper coding to allow the vendors to create drivers or whatnot to support Vista. Releasing this info after the fact was not a very good way for MS to go as most vendors are trying to play catch up while some have said we will do it when we have time or just not do anything at all. Maintaining a monopoly on everything that works with Vista is going to back fire right into MS face as evident by computer makers reverting back to XP Pro on their systems. There just seems to be so much Windows ME showing in the release of Vista.
There will be more very high critical problems with Vista, just wait as security is finding problems now and vendors are creating problems because of improper use of coding which is falling back on MS’s lackadaisical attitude.
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6 Comments
Dave Whittle
August 27th, 2007
at 2:29pm
Chris, I’m inclined to believe Adobe. Microsoft has gotten away with their bug-denying, blame-shifting, responsibility-abrogating corporate culture for decades now. When will they be held accountable? Probably never - certainly not by cowering vendors or a brainwashed public…
Al
August 27th, 2007
at 2:33pm
I have no idea what most of these problems are about but I might have an answer for the “limited” task manager. If all you’re seeing is the list of tasks/processes and the end task button then try double clicking a blank part of the window (just to the left of the end process button is nice and blank) and the menus the window should return to normal.
I have no idea what this “feature” is, I discovered it by accident and it seems pretty pointless!
Luckily for me Linux has top, which is a much more useful task manager.
Good luck with your other troubles!
Toby Tucker
August 27th, 2007
at 5:59pm
It’s taken a while but I feel fairly comfortable with XP, and if switching means I need to spend huge amounts of time working on problems that apparently have the experts scratching their heads, I’ll just say no to Vista. I’m won’t switch until some really vital program comes out that won’t work on XP. In addition, I would rather have my machine’s computing power dedicated to running apps rather than making the OS look pretty.
Dhensli
August 28th, 2007
at 10:56am
Serves them both right. Adobe must be one of the worst releasers of bloatware, and the more alternatives I find the better I like it. Vital programs that won’t run on XP? There won’t be any. For the SOHO, at least.
John Dowdell
August 28th, 2007
at 2:37pm
Is the core problem that an unstable installation of WinXP never installed Adobe Acrobat Professional 8.1 correctly?
(There was a lot of text, in odd sequence, and I might have tried to pull out the core point from the wrong paragraph.)
jd/adobe
Sean
September 23rd, 2007
at 10:10am
Running S&D Spybot Teatimer. You will have bad experiences with stuff like this. It offers good protection from driveby installs, but you must shut it off when doing software installs and updates. The easiest way of doing this is to shut off automatic updates (make them notification only in the preferences), configure an administrative account that does not run Teatimer and do all your installs and updates from that account. You might think that disabling Teatimer whenever you do an install will prevent your installation problems, but I guarantee that you will forget to do this on about 80% of your installs and it will cause you greif even if it does pop up the window asking if you want to allow the action. That hesitation usually is enough to blow over half of the attempted software installs and updates.