SERIOUS ADOBE ACROBAT PROFESSIONAL 8 ERROR

Activation does not collect, transmit, or use any personally identifiable information or hinder licensed users' ability to use the software the way they always have under the Adobe product license agreement.

I am a bit surprised by your response, but appreciate that work is now being done. I also feel strongly that users deserve to know what is in my last post far more broadly, not simply within some support group including everyone being paid to help with the solution.

For my part, let's assume that this is the problem.

Symantec or some third party provided some licensing and related security help to Adobe, presumably some third party purporting to be able to do installation and other related work. Perhaps some large contractor.

In undertaking the work, the same "solution" was provided to both Symantec and Adobe. This "solution" was in fact filled with flaws, including flaws related to periodic license checks.

Now, under the auspices of this third party and/or others, Adobe is trying to correct the problem.

When companies have a problem, it is quickly and broadly acknowleged. They do this for integrity sake, to ensure that their consumers and others know there is a problem and do not spend their own days working for a solution before getting involved with support.

To date, it is not at all obvious where the problem lies. What is certain is that there is a problem and that Adobe is responsible for the way its software works.

So far, I have only received the posting from one of its consultants. This is no way to treat a long-time very loyal customer.

Seatle 1101, you totally need to just *chill out*. Adobe is working on the problem and I am in direct contact with their development team...trust me, they are doing their best to figure this out.

As to your question about licensing, just buying a new license and attempting to activate it will not solve your problem. This is a software/code issue and until we/Adobe figure out a workaround or Adobe is able to patch the issue, it's just going to take some time. Once Acrobat is working properly again, MS Office and other apps using Adobe PDF creation tools will work once again...so just be patient.

Apparently there is some variable affecting us retail users that Adobe is not able to duplicate. I personally have seen several machines where Acrobat 8.1 is working fine, so although this thread has grown to large proportions, I suspect that the percentage of Adobe customers experiencing this issue is rather small.

Some users on this forum have taken extra steps to get the ball rolling within Adobe and I have seen a specific and intentional response by Adobe technicians. They are trying to solve the problem, and together...we will. It's now just a matter of when not if. So please, just give everyone involved some time to work with the techs and don't unnecessarily chew out Adobe for a problem they are unable to duplicate, yet are actively trying to fix.

My apologies for this being slightly off topic, but I just feel that we do owe them some credit here. Patience is key.

Just so everyone is clear, as a lot of noise is being posted. This forum is for individuals experiencing problems similar to the original post.

The original post deals with NOT being able to LOAD acrobat upon installation (i.e., it freezes, then crashes). If your O.S. is xp/vista/whatever, this forum is for you. If you have another issue regarding licensing or other acrobat problems, please start a new forum thread, otherwise the people at adobe will have to ignore multiple posts to identify the individuals having similar problems.

Adobe, like any other company, does not have to reveal licensing procedures to individuals that will not comprehend the technical information. They need from us, the symptoms we are experiencing, along with any other information. Throwing garbage at them does not help the situation. Be realistic, the other person on the end is a technical engineer/software programmer who likely understands a lot about the steps adobe uses to start up, they are not the complaints department!

OK. So here are some questions that Adobe should answer.

The license agreement I presume applies to my software installation permits one copy at home or on a laptop. It appears to permit that second copy only for the licensed user, so that it has two different license setups. The one is a machine license and the second is a user license. Forget for the moment what this does for the user who needs more than one user profile or even a different user on more modern machines to serve as a workable backup or for other reasons. And forget for the moment if Adobe is now able to determine these uses. If Adobe were smart about this, they would disclose immediately what is being done to prevent installations, as should Symantec. Failure to do so involves actions inside one's computer that these companies should carefully consider before continuing this process.

For Adobe: PLEASE LET US KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN CONNECTION WITH YOUR LICENSING SYSTEM, AND WHAT HAS CHANGED DURING THE PAST FEW WEEKS (OR MONTHS) AS APPROPRIATE. USERS HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW.

Next, the Deactivate portion in the Help | Activation menu works at times and at other times does not.

For Adobe: PLEASE LET US KNOW WHY THIS IS HAPPENING.

Installation is prevented in part by some portion of the operating system whether working in XP compatability mode or with the program working as an administator.

For Adobe: PLEASE LET US KNOW WHAT IS NOT WORKING.

The major issue here is not automatic installation, it is the failure properly to instruct everyone on what is happening and why. There are undoubtedly other problems here since the printer is not functioning and other things are not working. Worse, Office 2007 is not working with Acrobat, one of the main (if not only) reason some of us have bought Acrobat.

For Adobe: PLEASE LET US KNOW WHETHER AND WHY YOUR SOFTWARE IS FAILING, AND WHAT ELSE CAN HAPPEN. IN PARTICULAR, PLEASE LET US KNOW IF WE CAN JUST BUY ANOTHER LICENSE AND THIS WILL BE CORRECTED. THIS DID NOT WORK WITH SYMANTEC, WITH WHOM I BOUGHT FIVE ADDITIONAL LICENSES AND THEY STILL DID NOT INSTALL. I BELIEVE, BUT AM NOT CERTAIN, THAT THEY OFFERED ME MONEY BACK ON ALL OF ONE TYPE OF THEIR SOFTWARE BUT NOT ON ANOTHER THAT I TRIED TO SEE IF IT WOULD WORK. ESSENTIALLY, ALL SOFTWARE FROM SYMANTEC FAILED TO WORK ON THIS BOX, REQUIRING ME TO STOP USING ALL OF IT. I HAD TRIED TO USE CS3, AND PLANNED TO BUY A FULL VERSION. NOW I AM ALMOST CERTAIN NOT TO DO SO BECAUSE OF THESE LICENSE FAILURES.

Kevin, I'll send you the appropriate file from our foundation's XP-Pro laptop when I have access to it again. But working with me to solve the laptop's problem won't help my greater problem.

As I said in an earlier message, I successfully installed CS3 8.0 Professional from media I received from CompuMentor/Tech Soup on a new XP-Pro desktop which had never had any Adobe programs installed previously (I clean-installed XP-Pro myself). It works fine.

BUT -- I have the "Adobe Updater" totally disabled. I have no intention of updating any of my Adobe programs in any way until I know this won't ruin the usefulness of Acrobat on my new desktop too.

I run a small nonprofit foundation from this machine, and can't afford to have Acrobat disabled. If I understand other people correctly, once that happens, I may not even be able to get my old Acrobat 5.0 to work any more. (I really hope this isn't true, because that means the laptop's usefulness is close to toast.)

So finding individual workarounds doesn't help. I want to *know* that the software our Foundation paid for is going to work, and be updatable with updates that were intended to be included in the price we paid, and *still work*! Is that too much to ask?

As you can imagine I'm really unhappy.

If everyone's scenario is "similar but not identical", isn't there some common element underneath the similarities that you folks can find, and **fix**, and issue as Acrobat 8.2 -- telling people ahead of time just to skip 8.1 entirely??

Yes, I'm frustrated. I just hope I'm not missing important security updates by refusing to touch my current installation with a 10-foot pole until I'm assured it will still work afterwards.

Levanah

Ok, further input.

If one runs the software as Administrator, then no EPIC message occurs. I suspect, although do not know, that this is because Acrobat communicates with a server at Adobe everytime it is begun, especially if needed, and/or because EPIC software does this in some way either by communicating with Acrobat or in some other method either on the computer or on some off-site location. I assume this because deactivate is greyed out when not run as an administrator, and the EPIC message appears, whereas if run as administrator it apparently can intercommunicate in the manner required by Acrobat to function.

Before, I could not read Acrobat files in Acrobat 8 because it said I was not licensed. Now it says that I cannot print for this reason. Must still be something that involves the printer and precludes any further action at that level.

I have two other programs that also do PDF conversions. One has worked before, and still worked as of this morning. Mysterious, but not likely a conflict (or is it?).

The trick now is to get the printer to work without changing security settings.

I second Mitchell Cardno's suggestion of a free upgrade to Adobe 9 Pro for contributors to this thread. This may be the first time that a software manufacturer has required its users to actually PAY to alpha test their product. We are not talking about inconvenient bugs here - the software is UNuseable.

As for Adobe's inability to recreate these problems "inhouse", I respectfully suggest that they purchase a vanilla mass market computer and attempt to install and use Acrobat from an environment other than their own (i.e. outside their firewall) under the same conditions that we are struggling with.

Hi all,

Thanks very much to everyone who provided the file to me.
I will review them and get back to each of you this week.

Since everyone's situation / failure scenario are similar but not
identical, I am hoping that I could work with each of you individually
until we identify the root cause and appropriate workaround / solution.

Thanks again for your patient and apologize for the inconvenience
the issue might have caused you.

Best regards,
-Kevin Cheng
ALM Quality Engineering Manager

For the people that are experiencing the same problem as me, have you tried booting into safemode and trying acrobat? Before the windows screen after starting up, hit F8 repeatedly until a boot options menu appears. Select Safe Mode (with or without networking), and continue loading. Does Acrobat work while you're in safe mode? It does for me, I just cannot activate it.