Failed uninstall has left me unable to remove Adobe Acrobat Reader DC from my desktop

Question

I had version 21.011.20039 installed on 1/12/2022 - Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Now I have one Adobe folder in my "c:\Progrtam Files (x86)" folder with 2 exe's, RdrCEF.exe and RdrServicesUpdater.exe, both of which appear to be installer software, not PDF readers.

When I rtry to uninstall from the control panel, it says the "feature you are trying to use is on a network resource that is unavailabnle". I have no idea what network resource that could possibly be. It's looking for an .MSI that just doesn't exist.

When I ran the Adobe Acrobat DC Cleaner Tool (AdobeAcroCleaner_DC2021.exe), it said it "could not find Adobe Acrobat installed on the machine".

When I try to run the Microsoft Installation fixer (MicrosoftProgram_Install_and_Uninstall.meta.diagcab) it syas "Troubleshooting could not identify the problem".

Nevertheless, when I search the registry for "Adobe", it's loaded with mentions. Shouild I try writing a bot that edits the registry to replace all mentions of "Adobe" with Adobe_caca" ?

Please help!! I would love to be able to install a working Acrobat Reader. Thank you!

ls_rbls · Answer

Those are not installer files themselves.

Only .msi files know how to install/unistall themselves.

And Adobe Acrobat .msi packages contain subroutines that check if an older version of the same product is already installed.

Usually the correct way to uninstall a program via Microsoft Installer package, is by executing it and choose from the Setup Wizard "Uninstall".

Then employ the Cleanup tool to remove old traces of that software.

If you're having this issue is very probably because you tried to uninstall the software manually and deleted the .msi package that was used to install that version of Acrobat that you're not able to fully remove.

The same is true for both Adobe Acrobat Reader and Adobe Acrobat Pro; they share many of the same system libraries.

I will assume that if this was the case, and you were not able to find the .msi package for your version, to sign out from the current user account that you're using (even if it is an Adminstrator account) and sign back in as Administrator but using the built in Windows Administrator account (by default it is hidden, if you don't see it enable it).

If you are able to download again the Acrobat Reader version 21.011.20039, you should be able to run the setup program and uninstall apropriately without messing around with registry keys.

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