Adobe Reader DC keeps updating itself to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC!!!

[whydoyoukeepupgrading]

We use Adobe Reader on our terminal servers and it had been working perfectly fine up until recently.

For the last couple of months Adobe Reader has decided to automatically upgrade itself to Adobe Acrobat Pro DC every once in a while, asking all currently logged in users to sign into Adobe Reader with their Adobe ID, which they don't have because our company doesn't have any Acrobat Pro licenses. This will sometimes happen once in two weeks, or twice in two days! It seems sporadic and happens on all of the server in the farm.

As soon as I receive a report that Adobe is asking a user to sign in, I check the Application log in Event Viewer on that server for event 11707 and lo and behold, there's an event in there from a few minutes ago saying something like:

"Product: Adobe Acrobat DC (64-bit) -- Installation operation completed successfully."

To fix this, I've had to uninstall Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and install Adobe Reader from https://get.adobe.com/reader while the server is running and users are logged in, which makes the users understandably annoyed as they've been kicked off all of their PDFs for the 5th time in a month!

This week I got fed up and looked into other ways to install Adobe Reader and found you can sign up for an Adobe Reader distribution license and obtain an installer from a separate link. I installed this verison of the app (which is sadly 32-bit but doesn't make much of a difference in our environment) and things have been stable for the past three days and I'm hoping it'll remain that way...

Any idea why Adobe might have kept updating itself completely unprompted?

The only thing I can think of is that a user tried clicking the Edit PDF button and signed up for a free Acrobat Pro trial, but that requires a valid credit card but I can't imagine they signed up for that many trials...

Or maybe that particular user had an Adobe account with an expired Acrobat Pro trial and when they signed in after clicking Edit PDF, it upgraded the whole app to Acrobat Pro DC for all users? Isn't is supposed to ask users for an admin password before updating an app for all users on the server?

I'm keen to put this one to rest because it's been driving me mad.

[defaulth9608q1fcbdr]

Wow I can't believe there are no replies to this. This is happening to my environment and I am at this point powerless to stop it from happening.

Posting this in a hope you found out more about why this is happening....

[defaultsarbi3uwmr42]

Same issue here - Terminal servers (ours are 2019)

Very annoying - no offical reply?

@whydoyoukeepupgrading - did the redist verion fix this for you?

cheers

James

[whydoyoukeepupgrading]

Yes it did!

[Trevor O]

I just found this on one of our servers.  Out of 3 in a cluster 1 got "upgraded" to Acrobat DC 64bit on 10/19.  Not sure what the cause was but thanks for detailing ot what you found!

[Trevor O]

It looks like a bad update from Adobe.  The automatic update check installed using AcroPro.msi.  The Event Viewer log for event 1042 MSI Installer "Ending a Windows Installer transaction: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\Extract\DiskImages\AcroPro.msi. Client process ID: 65308"

For now we've disabled the automatic task that updates Acrobat.

[Alec5EA0]

Trevor O 

Did this fix the problem disabling the update Task?

[Lee22150724jxtn]

This is happening to our 2016 RDS farm too! We thought we where suffering from the known Adobe Reader Sign in bugs until you actually signin and realize its offering a 7 day trail because the account hasn't been assigned a Acrobat Pro license.

The obvious give away (when launched) its updated is the title bar changes from "Adobe Acrobat Reader DC"

to "Adobe Acrobat Pro DC"

So even though the upsell (and sign in) was specifically disabled in the Acrobat Customization Wizard for the Reader installer MSI - something has triggered the bad update!

So, as suggested I've not only disabled the Adobe update servicem, we've applied an GPO Applocker policy to deny C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\ARM\Extract\DiskImages\AcroPro.msi

[Brian22244279wyml]

Stop auto upgrade from 32 bit reader to 64 bit rea... - Adobe Support Community - 12399955

Acrobat Reader DC migration to 64-bit (adobe.com)  <-- Adobe is upgrading from 32bit to 64bit by design.  It's a slow roll out and will continue to happen.  Top link shows how to stop it.  Hope that helps. 

[Trevor O]

Unfortunately that's not the issue we have experienced.  The issue is not Reader 32 bit upgrading to Reader 64 bit.  The issue we've had is Reader "upgrading" to Acrobat DC Pro which requires a license.  It's doing this without admin rights which is the most troubling part of the problem because then users can no longer use Acrobat on the affected system and it takes someone with admin rights to go in, uninstall Acrobat DC Pro and then re-install Acrobat Reader.

[Samuel22759667g14y]

Is this still a problem? I just experienced this issue, and what's worse is I can't seem to install Acrobat and Reader on the same machine like I might normally be able to. What's going on?!

[Trevor O]

I just had it happen again this week.  We had disabled the update task in the task scheduler and it still happened on one of our servers. 

[Carlos the Grackle]

Has anyone found a solution to this?  I am having the same issue with Acrobat Reader somehow upgrading to Acrobat Pro.  I have unistalled Pro and reinstalled Reader, only to have it upgrade the next day.  In addition to users being unable to open .pdf files because they don't have an Acrobat Pro license, the upgrade process appears to be crashing the Citrix Printer Management service, which prevents printer redirect from the client computer. 

[Jim22978638umem]

Also having same issue on Microsoft RDS server..

Seems we might have one user with a full Pro subscription on his local machine logging onto the shared remote desktop server where free Adobe Reader DC is installed and this is upgrading the free Adobe Reader DC to the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC and then this is prompting all the users to Sign in, which they of course can't.

If we ununstall it and reinstall the free Adobe Reader DC then a short while later it upgrades itself back to the Adobe Acrobat Pro DC version once again. Any reason why this is suddenly happening ?

The user with the Pro licence says he has been logging on for some time now in this manner and hasn't had/caused these issues in the past, its only just started happening.

[GRANT23637609i894]

We have a client that started experiencing this last week.  Adobe Reader upgrades to Pro at 3pm daily.  Every day!!!  And we keep reinstalling.

Thanks for this thread.  I have disabled the Task Schedular and set the Adobe Update service to manual.  Will see how that goes.  What a pain Adobe!!!  Forcing people to use their paid subscription.

Cause: I suspect somebody logged into their terminal server Adobe Reader with an account.  And since then it's stuffed it.   

[Alec5EA0]

Hi, I managed to stop it from upgrading by stopping the adobe service in services.msc and changing the login to a user account with the incorrect password. so if it tried to upgrade it would try with an incorrect account password

[ExhaustedTech]

Adobe's answer to me was to downgrade back to 32bit instead of running 64bit. Incredibly frustrating as that is not an answer. We need to run 64bit, otherwise we have compatibility issues with Office

[AFK_Audit]

Guys, I found what's wrong. Efficient Adobe managers have added "paid buttons for turning pages". Clicking on them pops up a "try a 7-day subscription" and users clicking on it.

[Bradley250010988kb8]

This is still an issues as of September 2021. We have not been able to find a fix for this and it is costing out production hours. 

[Bradley250010988kb8]

Sorry I meant 2022.

[Alexander27715504qw98]

@AdobeSupportCommunity... why is there no official answer?! Poor service really!

[willams46067935]

Try to stop the update or check for an update
use this 

[David299423042rbs]

May 2023 : random upgrade issue is still alive & kicking well.

[ExhaustedTech]

What's the issue you're having? If it's Reader upgrading to Pro, that mystery was solved. 

If you're referring to updates and not upgrades, you have to turn off the updater.

[David299423042rbs]

>What's the issue you're having
Exactly what was stated in the original post.

>If it's Reader upgrading to Pro, that mystery was solved
Maybe, but the reg setting still does not work.
No staff are clicking on the dopey above "paid buttons for turning pages" button thing in reader.

I have read all ~24 replies,

Happened to us on Wednesday night.

Reverted back to 32 bit reader yesterday (Thursday) morning. 

The above 'don't update' registry setting is in place.

Our 32 bit reader self upgraded to 64 bit pro Thursday night. Hence the "its still alive and kicking well" comment.

Im feeling that the easiest fix is just to ditch Adobe and go with Fox PDF reader or CutePDF reader.