How to prevent unwanted Adobe processes from starting or even better, from being installed in?

[mmo18]

Whenever I install (i.e. also when I update) Adobe Reader on my Windows system I end up with a bunch of continuously running background processes: "Acrobat Update Service" and "Acrobat Collaboration Synchronizer".

I don't want these programs to run on my system! I am regularly checking for updates myself (using a different tool) and I have no intentions to use any Adobe collaboration features, so both are useless to me and only enlarge my system's attack-surface (something for which Adobe has quite an unfamous history).

So, how do I get *permanently* rid of these processes, i.e. ideally also across re-installations?

[mmo18]

I forgot to mention: I already tried disabling the TaskScheduler entry "Adobe Acrobat Update Task" but after each update this task is re-enabled. 😞

[LeoUpdaterX]

The only correct way to disable product updates is to use bUpdater "policy"

For Acrobat DC Registry path is HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Adobe Acrobat\DC\FeatureLockDown

Set DWORD bUpdater registry value to 0

[mmo18]

Thanks - I added that to my registry. Meanwhile I also wrote me a small script that runs every 15 min's (via task-scheduler) and kills these processes - should they ever show up again. I just find it annoying that one has to come up with such methods to get rid of unwanted SW.