Acrobat X Pro (10 and lower) won't start on Windows 7 (64-bit)

[Artsandbeauty]

Hello, does anyone know why Acrobat X Pro (10 and lower) won't start on Windows 7 (64-bit)? It just doesn't respond whether I try to open files with it or double-click to start the program. Re-installation and Repair doesn't help. I had the same issue with the previous versions of Acrobat on this computer. 

Thank you!

[dave_m_k]

Hello everyone,

Could you please try the following steps based on your operating system:

Windows:

• Uninstall Acrobat (either as a stand-alone installation or as a component of your Creative Suite installation)
• Run the Acrobat Cleaner Tool to remove any remnants of the application.
• Reinstall Acrobat X through either your CS6 installer or the Adobe Application Manager (Creative Cloud subscribers)

Mac:

• Uninstall Acrobat (please check both Applications\Adobe Acrobat\Uninstall and Applications\Utilities\Adobe Installers for available Acrobat uninstallers)
• Run the CSCleaner Tool and Remove Acrobat.
• Reinstall Acrobat X through either your CS6 installer or the Adobe Application Manager (Creative Cloud subscribers)

-David

[TheBitBug]

Clarification please.  If I have a creative suite, am I suppose to uninstall acrobat from within that?  If so, how do you uninstall one program within the suite? (I have Master Collection CS6).

What I see in my windows uninstall software window is Acrobat X Pro as a seperate line item program to uninstall.  Then on a seperate line is CS6.

Thanks.

[TheBitBug]

You do realize the Acrobat Cleaner Tool specifically says to NOT use it on a creative suite installation, right?  So if we have a suite, do we just skip this step?

Thx.

[chrispopovic]

The previous instructions specifically stated NOT to use the cleaner tool. Do we take the advice of the previous instructions or toss those away and follow the advice of the adobe forum admin?

FYI - I ran repair in the Win uninstall control panel on Adobe Reader X and at least I can open .pdfs in Reader.

C'mon Adobe, how about a better explanation than reinstall? With this many people having the exact same issue in the exact same timeline, it's not a stretch to think that a recent update broke the app. Push out a rollback app or something.

[TheBitBug]

Agreed!

[TheBitBug]

FOR ALL:

I'm losing money on this fourth day of this crap, so I have to experiment with fixing this even though I don't want to, think I should have to, nor have the time to.

Regardless.  I did the following (NOTE: I did NOT use the cleaner recommended above as that program specifically says NOT to use it on a Master Collection install).

I am running Master Collection CS6 on a Windows 7 Professional 64bit OS.

I removed Acrobat X Pro from the windows control panel>uninstall a program

After removal, I rebooted my system.

I then launched the Adobe CS6 Master Collection set-up.exe file from my downloaded CS6 original install files.

Within the Setup Program:

Click Install

Accept License Agreement

Enter serial number, click next

The Options Dialog box should come up.  I checked ONLY the Acrobat X Pro box.

Click through the install from there.

Since doing this about two hours ago I have viewed a few .pdf's and saved a Illustrator CS6 file as a PDF and an illustrator CS4 file as a PDF.

So far, so good.... if anything changes I'll post an update.

Good luck to all with whatever you decide to do... hopefully Adobe will release a fix soon!

[TheBitBug]

TO ALL:  There is another thread going on here->http://forums.adobe.com/message/4493641#4493641

I am pretty sure this has been happening to everyone at the 30 day mark (30 days after your installation).  If I am right about this, please post on the thread http://forums.adobe.com/message/4493641#4493641 and reply post 39 to David (Adobe Employee) to help Adobe see this is happening at 30days.  It gives them a place to focus there efforts.

According to David's post Adobe is unable to replicate the problem, so we can help them fix this by confirming it is happening at the 30 day mark.

Thank you!

[TheBitBug]

Hey, Guess What?  Yep, 30 days since my first 30 days lock out (see back around post 28).  As several of us feared, it locked out again right on the money after an additional 30 days.

In reviewing this thread for more info, I notice one from Adobe staff person Amrita.  I will give that fix a try this time and see what happens in another 30 days.

However, while I appreciate the post from Amrita and hope it solves our problem once and for all, it really would have been much more professional for Adobe to notify its user base instead of letting people get blindsided with this bug. 

I expect much more for my money Adobe.  You should have pushed out the fix in a critical update.  At a minimum, you should have poped out an email notification to all registered users of the product to expect the bug and the fix for it.

[Allen Cobb]

Hi David,

I was assured a couple of days ago (in this thread, by an Adobe employee) that I should NOT use this cleaner tool with a Suite installation, as the red full-caps warning on the cleaner page says:

IMPORTANT: THIS TOOL IS NOT FOR USE WITH ANY CREATIVE SUITE PRODUCTS INCLUDING SUITES THAT CONTAIN ACROBAT. IT CAN ONLY BE USED WITH STANDALONE VERSIONS OF ACROBAT AND ADOBE READER.

So I'm not at all sure if this is safe to do or not. Since fully uninstalling standalone and suite versions, and then re-installing, without running cleaner, has worked on my Master Collection, I don't think I'll try this unless the whole thing dies again. I think if you're asking everyone to ignore the above warning, you should probably explicitly mention that they should ignore it.

Thanks,

Allen

[john4243]

I went ahead and ran the cleaner (on my CS 6 MC install) after removing Acrobat. Then I reinstalled Acrobat from the Suite installer. I knew it was a risk to run the cleaner given the incomplete and contradictory messages we're getting... but so far, Acrobat is working an the other components seem to be fine. Obviously I don't know what the heck the cleaner is doing... and I can't guarantee that it didn't screw something (subtle) up... but for the moment, everything looks fine.

Not an endorsement. Just wanted to relay my experience.

Clear direction from Adobe would be helpful...

John

[Sandeep_V_]

Hi John,

Use of Acrobat Cleaner tool is not recommended with Creative Suite because it may remove common files/preferences/settings used by other suite products. If you think that there are not any, you can use it. It was just to keep the users safe. There is no point of breaking one thing to get other thing to work.

This forum discussion was started with, i believe, standalone version of Acrobat 9/X on Windows 7. And the very first reply worked for the user. Now, with different users working in different environment, obviously, there may not be one solution for every user. There may be upgrades, fresh installations, unsuccessful updates or anything. It can be a perpetual installation of Acrobat or via Adobe Creative Cloud (CCM). With minimum information about everything mentioned above, David had provided the generic steps to get a clean copy of Adobe installed on the machine(post 21). I appreciate that you tried those steps and many thanks for sharing your results.

Issues mentioned by acik84 (Post 9)- I tried 2-3 times but could not reproduce them on a fresh VM.

In addition to this-

You don't really need to uninstall the entire suite to uninstall Acrobat. It always appear as a seperate product in Control Panel->Programs and Features. You can remove it from there. If in any case you don't find it there, start the uninstallation process of Master Collection and SELECT ACROBAT. You can also check the box to remove preference (just to make it cleaner).

If it is through CCM, you need to use Adobe Application Manager to uninstall Acrobat.

I hope this will help.

[john4243]

Thanks Sandeep,

I'd just point out that it's been 10 hours since David posted those instructions... and numerous users have asked repeatedly if they should just ignore the warning about not using the 'cleaner' with CS. ... Knowing that there was a serious problem, it would have been nice for someone from Adobe to have been monitoring this forum and have responded soon after TheBitBug asked the question 9 hours ago. Some users have been dealing with this for over 2 weeks... and we really just need information (... and to know the problem is being worked on.)

In fact, as soon as you know whether or not we'll see this again in another 30 days, it would be great to tell us. Even if you haven't solved the problem at that point, keeping us informed can ease a lot of tension.

I know companies don't want to admit their mistakes and don't want to draw extra attention to problems... but transparency goes a long way toward earning some points with your customers.

Thanks,

John

[MixManSC1]

No idea if it's related but I checked my system and I installed CS6 Design Premium Suite on May 12th at 11:30AM (based on the folder creation date for most of the programs folders). I'm thinking it actuaally was Tuesday this week, 30 days after install that it died on this machine. So throw me in the right at 30 day boat as well. All other parts of the suite continue to work fine. I have not had time to try uninstalling/rebooting, etc to fix it. Aside from that why should I have to? There needs to be a proper FIX for this ASAP.

[Machtwo]

Well I had the same problem and followed 818g,s solution by deactivating and and then reactivate and it now all works fine. However I also checked as to when it was first installed and yes it happened right at 30 days! Hopefully in 30 days this is not gooing to happen again...

[Guest]

Why are you so extending everything? I try some changeses of files and Acrobat has become open for a few seconds. I used "repaired acrobat installation" button on Help menu. And my problem has gone. So, we have a very simple solution; but firstly we have to open the program. What a dilemma! In that case, why Adobe make an ".exe" that will be replacing "repaired acrobat installation" button? Easy huh?

[Kathrynxyzzy]

This solution did not work for me. Acrobat still closes after about 20 seconds.

Kat Gale

Office: 972-820-3834

[Guest]

Kat, main problem is activition of the product. This activition effects some files. So try;

1. Deactivate, activate, and repair installation in program menu.
2. If it doesn't work, deactivate, repair installation in program menu, activate.
3. If it doesn't work again, delete cache files on "C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD" (for 64 bit OS) - "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD" (for 32 bit OS) and try first 2 steps again.
4. After all still you have problems, try compatibility settings. run as administrator and win7 or xp. And go step 1.

[paradoox]

For the record, since I don't have the installation disks with me.  I just deleted all the files in "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD" (Win 7 32 bit machine) and Acrobat Pro is working again.  Of course it wants the serial number (which I don't have with me, actually I guess I could look it up online) but I'm running with a 30 day trial.

[paradoox]

For the record the CS6 activation key didn't work directly even though Acrobat Pro was installed as part of CS6.  Following the suggestion in another thread, I deactivated another CS6 component (Photoshop), rebooted, and then reactivated CS6 which also reactivated Acrobat Pro.   Hopefully it won't stop working again, but at least I didn't need to totally uninstall and reinstall it (or all of CS6).

[shine_]

Deactivating CS6 in Photoshop and then reactivating it worked for me too.

It happened before, I guess it happens about each year once or twice.

Might be some software component error.

[818g]

The solution that Jimbo7777 suggested on the parallel thread does work:

• start up Photoshop
• Help/Deactivate
• close application
• start up Photoshop or Acrobat (it is now running in trial mode)
• go through the activation process giving the serial

It's much faster and less painful than uninstalling/reinstalling the whole suite.

[clangschultz]

818g got it right... i deactivated, and voila!  launched right away!  wonder if i need to do this every 30 days now?

[EvAdobe1]

Hi!

I've just finished my chat session with an Adobe tech, who helped me to quickly solve my issue with Acrobat. Like all of you, my copy of CS6 Acrobat X Pro has stopped working. It just wouldn't launch at all, and I could not open ANY pdf file.

They asked me if my computer is 32 or 64 bit. Mine is 64 bit, so I'm posting this to "only" those who have the same criteria.

The solution they gave me was to follow this path: Start > Computer > C:\\ drive > Program Files (x86) > Common Files > Adobe > Adobe PCD > Cache > Cache.db

Once you're there, you have to RENAME Cache.db as "Cache.old.db"

Now you can launch the appliation. It will give you the software license agreement. Accept it.

It will tell you it's a trial, so you have to click on "License this software"

You must sign in to your Adobe account.

Then enter your license number. And that's it!

They told me I wouldn't encounter any further issues. I expressed my serious concerns of having this same issue 30 days from today, but they reassured me that I wouldn't face this issue again. So, let's keep our fingers crossed

I hope this helps those of you with 64 bit PCs

(I did ask for their permission to post this solution here, FYI)

[MSHarris13]

This did actually work....for a short while. Acrobat closed on it's own after working for an hour or so. I've applied the solution 3 times and it appears to work each time, then when opening a new file, it opens, then after a few moments, closes again.

[EvAdobe1]

Oh Gosh!!! ... YES!!! ... Same thing again ... I can't believe this!!! ... Can anybody from Adobe please DO something about this issue??? It's getting frustrating being unable to work on my files like this! After paying so much money for these software programs, locking us out like this is ridiculous!!!