Cannot install - Error Code: 136

[Sturm359]

I was having issues with the Fill & Sign part of Acrobat, so I figured a good ol' flush-n-fill was in order. I uninstalled Acrobat DC, rebooted, and attempted to reinstall it. I received the message: "Unable to install the product. Click Retry to download and install it again. (Error Code: 136)". The log file it generates:

Exit Code: 7
Please see specific errors below for troubleshooting. For example,  ERROR: DW003, DW071 ...


-------------------------------------- Summary --------------------------------------

 - 0 fatal error(s), 2 error(s) 



----------- Payload: Adobe Acrobat DC 21.7.20099.0 Adobe Acrobat\Setup.exe_21.007.20099 -----------

ERROR: DW071: 

ERROR: DW003: Third party payload installer Adobe Acrobat\Setup.exe failed with exit code: 1603

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The error code analyzer is completely useless; I have tried the "Retry" button many times with the exact same result. I even let Microsoft go ahead and update my Windows 10 to Windows 11. I also ran Wise Registry Cleaner because some research indicated that the "Error Code 136" means something wrong with the registry. None of these tactics have worked; I still get the same error.

[Amal. · Accepted solution]

Hi there

Hope you are doing fine and sorry to hear that. As described you get error 136 when trying intall the Acrobat DC

Please go throuh the correct answer marked in the similar discussion https://community.adobe.com/t5/acrobat-discussions/can-t-install-acrobat-dc-error-136/m-p/11792313#M... and see if that works for you.

Regards

Amal

[Sturm359]

Since I am running on a Windows PC, I assume that you mean the only option available to me is to create a new admin user on this computer. Will doing this bypass any registry problems? And once I install Acrobat DC with this new test user, will it be installed for my user account as well (so that I can subsequently delete the test user account)?

[Amal.]

Hi there

Installing the application in the new user profile is for testing purpose only to see if its an issue with the user profile or not.

As Error Code 136 is usually caused by a corrupted registry entry. Most errors on your machine are caused by uninstalling programs, installing new ones and accidentally deleting important files.

Hope this information will help

Regards

Amal

[Sturm359 · Accepted solution]

Well, I cannot explain what happened, but as soon as I logged in with my new, local, test user, I saw an Acrobat DC icon on the desktop. It opened up just fine for that user and the Fill & Sign component seemed to work, as well. I don't know how it was installed, because I not only un-installed it, but I also ran the AdobeAcroCleaner tool to completely uninstall it.

I did, however, install Adobe Reader soon afterward, just to see if its Fill & Sign component worked. Perhaps it recognized my login information and automatically updated Reader to Acrobat? I don't know.

In any case, signing back into my main accoung in Windows 11, I found that Acrobat DC is still installed and working fine, even the Fill & Sign component.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[sdude1]

Same here, except I just did a standard uninstall. Creative Cloud app still does not recognize that Acrobat is installed but it is back and working just fine now for my test user and my main account. I'm on Windows 10.