Acrobat 10 won't start anymore

I'm seeing this failure with Lightroom on my Mac.  Fortunately, ten seconds with Instruments told me what was wrong.  Instead of doing product registration correctly using a privileged helper, they try to write files directly into /Library as the currently logged-in user.  Unfortunately, the permissions for /Library keep getting tightened down (because apps should specifically *not* be doing what Adobe is doing!), and thus the folders their installers create no longer inherit a group writable bit for the admin user in Mountain Lion and newer (or maybe even Lion and newer).

To fix this problem, run Terminal, and type:

    sudo chmod g+w "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/XXXXX"

where XXXXX is the name of the Adobe app (in my case, Lightroom), then press return.  Redo your registration, and it should "just work", but you *must* be logged in as an admin user.  Otherwise, you'll have to set the permissions even more permissively.

If that doesn't work, you can figure out what file Adobe's app is failing to write (without producing any user-visible error—shame on you, Adobe, for not checking result codes and telling the user what file your app failed to write, not logging the error in the system log, etc.) as follows:

1.  Run the app that's causing problems.  Get as far as the screen where you enter your serial number.

2.  Run Instruments (part of Xcode) and choose the "File Activity" template.

3.  Click the pop-up menu that says "Choose Target" and choose the Adobe app in the "Attach to Process" submenu.

4.  Click the record button, then enter your admin password when prompted.

5.  Switch back to the Adobe app and enter your serial number.

6.  Look at the list of files and find the one where the file descriptor is listed as -1.  This is the descriptor that you get when a file cannot be opened for any reason.

7.  Fix the permissions on the folder that contains the file, or add missing folders, or whatever, as needed to make it so that Photoshop can write to that file.

I found a solution. Close everything adobe. Open illustrator or photoshop and deactivate ( before you do, make sure you have the serial number. ) close the program down... Open again and agree to Eula then select to activate. Re activate the program. Close then open it again... Now try acrobat.

This is from memory... Sorry it isn't more detail. Let me know if it works

Sent from my iPad

Funny you should say that....I installed CS6 on May 14  :/

Neither this solution nor any of the myriad others on the web work for any length of time on my Windows 7 64 bit machine. Acrobat stopped launching at the 30 day mark, and while I can get it to start with this solution it always fails again within days.

I would think a company the size of Adobe would be embarassed enough by such an obvious gaffe that they'd want to get to the bottom of this and provide a fix. But here we are a month later....

I am on Windows 7 64 bit (not sure if everyone else is on a PC too)

I have had this problem arise today, I have 2 start up disks with two installations of the CS6 Design Suite with Acrobat X Pro fully updated, on both the problem has surfaced, Acrobat does not start or open any PDF anymore.

I have read and trued deleting cache.db on one installation, I went thru all those windows and had to retype serail number. And it worked!

But only for a few time, it open once, a second time but sometime later I opened a PDF and a few seconds later Acrobat suddenly cloed down, no erroe wahtsoever appeared. and then no more.

I went to the other installation and updtaed and launched Adobe Applicxation Manager, it says I have some applications (illustrator,....., but not Acrobat X Pro), installed, OK. I installed again from that windows Acrobat Pro X. When finished it states that and asks for launch now, perfect, i clicked there but nothing happens, i 2 click some PDFs and nothing happens.

So I am stuck there too.

Should I call Support or is any authorized voice telling us why it's happening, how it can be solved or if we have to wait for some kind of patch or update. Meanwhile I will try to uninstall it and place back Acrobat 9.