How to manually uninstall Adobe Acrobat 9 or force installation?

Report · Jun 02, 2009

Acrobat was not cleanly uninstalled with a installation manager Total Uninstall, and now the standard uninstaller is no longer available. Reinstallation is currently not possible because the installer believes Acrobat is still installed. It seems my only option is to manually uninstall Acrobat, or possibily simplier option of forcing installation. I have removed all directories and subdirectories associated with Acrobat but this is not enough. Any help would be appreciated.

Report · Jun 03, 2009

Well I guess you know now not to use crappy 3rd party utilties. What's wrong with using your OSes application removal anyways ?! That's what it's there for. <end of rant>

Go to Microsoft download and get the "Installer Cleanup Utility" (not sure if that's the correct name, but it's close enough . Run it and see if you can proceed with the installation of Acrobat.

Report · Jun 03, 2009

Installer Cleanup Utility seemed promising since the installation of Acrobat is detected. But it doesn't work, it just hangs indefinitely with hour glass after selecting for removal.

BTW I used a 3rd party uninstall in the first place because the Adobe uninstaller gave me an error during uninstall and rolled itself back.

Report · Apr 20, 2010

S.D.A. wrote:
Well I guess you know now not to use crappy 3rd party utilties. What's wrong with using your OSes application removal anyways ?! That's what it's there for. <end of rant>

Go to Microsoft download and get the "Installer Cleanup Utility" (not sure if that's the correct name, but it's close enough . Run it and see if you can proceed with the installation of Acrobat.

FWIW it's not as simple as that. We use an administrative install point, (following adobe's "instructions" I might add), and several systems, including mine, got pretty jacked up from the 9.3.2 quarterly update.

Had to rip it out by the roots, and the msi cleanup is only part of the solution. Don't ask for a howto - I'm still too traumatized.

Registry surgery, boot to safe mode, remove application directory, some start->run entries, yada yada yada. Had to boot into linux to fix the recycle bin after all was said and done.

What a bloated mess.

I will add that most systems were fine, but this application is waaaaaaay too complex for what it does. Installation is fragile in a managed desktop environment, repair tedious. Updates are unforgiveably large and The MSP approach to patches/updates is a freaking nightmare to deal with. It sprays crap all over the system, the registry, and what the installer does is poorly documented if at all.

Funny how adobe nevers seems to chime in on any of these threads, BTW.

Report · Jun 09, 2010

I wonder why you had go all through that...

I just used the KB article for removing Acrobat 8 manually. Though I had to figure out a couple of files on my own but the names were similar.

In KB it was written with reference to 8 I just used the same reference to 9 and as far as registries were concerned there also the names of the keys were not exactly the same but similar.

I hope this would help you in future.

Report · Jun 10, 2010

The point is that it is waaaaaaayyyyy more involved than it needs to be. Can it be done? Yes. Does it need to be that complicated (or that freakin HUGE)? No. I enjoy a good scripting challenge, but given the lack of detailed information, the patching model used, etc, it's just bloody ridiculous.

Report · Jun 03, 2009

Have you tried removing the application from Windows' list of programs?

At least for XP, the list is found in Start-->Control Panel-->Add or Remove Programs. From there, find Adobe Acrobat Pro 9, click on Change/Remove, then an installer should open that allows you to Modify, Repair, or Remove the program.