I don't know whether these steps have allowed my Acrobat Pro 8.0 to work in Windows 10. However here is what I did.
My Win 10 Pro is an upgrade from Win 7 Pro. Acrobat Pro 8.0 was on the Win 7 Pro machine and carried over working.
Prior to a recent update of Windows 10, everything seemed ok with running Acrobat Pro 8.0. Windows 10 recognized it and it had the proper file associations.
After the Update:
Windows 10 replaced my default PDF program with Adobe Reader DC. Acrobat Pro 8.0 disappeared from the Default drop down menu and was longer associated with PDF files. Thank goodness Acrobat Pro 8 was still alive. I had to search the hard drive for it because it was not listed as a program under "All Apps"". When I re-associated it with PDF files, it was listed as an "unknown application". The association sort of worked when I wanted to open a particular file. However, when an unknown or non-particular file was launched, it still was opened by Reader DC. Naturally that got me pissed. I have never liked Reader since I have had Acrobat Pro. You can't do what you can in Pro in Reader. Thus I wanted it gone. I used the uninstall in Control Panel. That didn't work. More pissed. Since I know that certain AV programs need a special program from the maker to totally uninstall, I looked om the Adobe website and found AdobeAcroCleaner_DC2015.zip http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/acrobatcleaner.html . That did the job, Acrobat Reader was totally non-functioning. I think it was totally gone. What's interesting is that after Reader was removed Acrobat Pro 8 became a recognized program; however it is still not on the drop down menu.("Huh")
One of my goals was to install all the updates, which I couldn't. I still can't. To that goal I went into the registry, I noticed that .msp files were no longer a file type to be recognized, so I added it through out the registry. The update files are .msp, so I thought that would do it. Nope. Being determined to override Win 10's limitation on Acrobat Pro, I went back into the registry. Using the registry of a Win 8.1 machine which has a working copy of Pro with all the updates, I made changes to and created all the registry items of Acrobat Pro to that of Pro on the 8.1 machine. That took some time. When I finished I was sure I could deploy the updates. Double clicking on the update files still did not work. Next try. I found the install package of Acrobat Pro in Windows\installer. I got the right package from the info in the registry. I then tried to use the .exe files in the installer to deploy the updates. No go. In fact when I tried the .exe files I got back a message "This app can't run on your PC" "To find a version for PC, check with the software publisher". Right, that isn't going to happen. In the mean time I found msiexe.exe was "the" windows installer for .msi files. It was also referenced to .msp files. Not being knowledgeable about launching files, I guessed and tried. Again no go. So I went to the Net. I found some references for using msiexe.exe, but didn't understand them. So since I have screwed up my registry before by trying command line functions without knowledge, I stopped guessing. I spent considerable time on the Net looking for simple instructions. That's how I got here. You can see my post "Update Acrobat Pro 8.0 in Windows 10" https://☼forums.adobe.com/thread/1962411 (remove the ☼)
Since I have gotten on the Forum, I have read horror stories in posts when attempting to update to 8.1. Working programs died. I now have decided not to do any updates until the update problem has a solution.
Right now my Acrobat Pro 8 is working fine. I'm not sure it is stable, but I think so. Nevertheless, it might be all my adjustments to the registry which is making it run without problems. Again it might not. I might just be lucky. Time will tell.
I thought if I told my story, it might be a way to get a non-working Acrobat program to work. I'm not saying it will because, per Adobe Acrobat Pro 8.0 is not compatible with Windows 10 https://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/system-requirements-acrobat-family-products.html I think this a CYA statement that they have not and probably will not test the legacy programs in Win 10. Is this their way of saying buy a new program. My personal opinion is that Adobe as well as some other vendors are in cahoots with Microsoft to make sure legacy programs don't work in Win 10. Remember Microsoft's comment that if the program works in Win 7 or Win 8.1, it will work in Win 10. Right!!
You can use the steps I did, but there is no guarantee that they will wok for you. You are on your own with that. I know it is unnerving to have Acrobat not work. Best of luck to those with non-working programs.
3
Replies
AdChoices