Completely uninstall Adobe Application Manager

[stjunkie]

I mistakenly installed Adobe Application Manager last night because I thought it was needed to make it easier to update my existing Adobe Reader v10 and my other Adobe products (AIR, Flash, Photoshop Elements, and Premier Elements). How stupid of me to not do my research FIRST!!! Now I can not get rid of the damned thing. It will not show up in the Windows Programs and Features program listing in the Control Panel so I can remove it that way and the instructions to completely remove AAM that are given on the web site simply do not work as I have NONE of the applications listed in AAM that purportedly will remove AAM if they are uninstalled.

[Guest]

Thanks Ken. Very helpful.

However, if I suddenly find a new application in my system tray that I didn't install or ask to be installed in any updates, I'll hose Adobe products off my system faster than you can say "FoxIt" and "Corel".

Incidentally, it's really annoying that we have to install ANOTHER program in order to get this piece of crap off our computers.

[Gazzzzzzzz]

Hi Ken,

I just found what this software really is. 

How can I complain to Adobe about this?  Poor form Adobe. 

Misrepresentation, can't easily be uninstalled - in fact you need a special app to get rid of it,

floggs off software you did ask for - smells, acts and sounds like a virus.

I wish Macromedia had the money to take over an arrogant Adobe..

g

[little_henners]

I'm sad that my first post here has to be a big whinge but I am going to do it anyway.

This is malware pure and simple - I didn't choose to install it, I can't uninstall it, it doesn't show up in my programs list.

It doesn't even work properly. I have the production suite, yet it can't see that I have photoshop.

Even with the lowly education licence I paid what to me is an exorbitant amount of money and am now being advertised to.

I wonder if a torrent will force this rubbish on me? Seems like once again the paying customer gets what is basically an inferior product.

this really, really sucks.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

Ken G. Rice wrote:

The Adobe Application Manager is not a marketing tool, and you can remove it from your system.

You will need to get the Adobe Cleaner Tool from here http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cscleanertool.html. Launch the Adobe Cleaner tool and in the top right drop-down select Creative Cloud. In the list select Creative Cloud Installer and then click the button labelled 'Cleanup selected'. The Adobe Application Manager will be removed from your computer.

Three questions, Ken:

1. Why are there advertisements for other Adobe products if the AAM is 'not' a marketing application?
2. Why does the AAM usurp the underlying OS and not obey the standards with regard to presenting its uninstall routine to the Add/Remove Programs section of Windows?
3. Is this application necessary if the user is willing to download the updates from the Adobe site?

I have to say that I didn't really like Adobe in the first place, but it's taken me two and a half days to install three of your products.  I've telephoned your company four times and used the online chat three times.  Can't your company get it right considering the huge amounts of money you ask for your shabby software?

Someone asked for a link to register complaints in one of the earlier posts; where's the link?

[Ken G. Rice]

@mandelbrot - I corrected my response in reply number 32 from what you quoted in your reply.

Answers:

1. Which product or products are you using? This forum is centered around the Creative Cloud which lets you install all the applications in the Master Collection, Lightroom and the Edge tools. So these are not advertisements, they are providing links to install the software that a customer wants to try (30-day trial) or download (payed subscription).
2. AAM is required for updating the installed Adobe applications and for the licensing check every 30 days. If you remove AAM then this would not be possible, thus it is not shown in the Window's Control panel. If you uninstall all Adobe software then AAM will uninstall.
3. Yes you need AAM for updates.

I do not know the specifics of your calls and chats with customer support. Please email me at kenrice@adobe.com with your Adobe ID email and I will review your support cases to see what can be improved.

There is no specific link for registering complaints.  You can post in this forum, or in a more specific product forum if you have an issue with for example Dreamweaver. You can user customer support as you have before. You can email employees directly with your complaints if their email is available.

[little_henners]

I can live with all of that if that's the way you want to go well it's annoying but so be it.

What I want to know is why can't this Adobe software see that I have Photoshop installed, and how can it do a successful job of updating my adobe products when it doesn't even know what's already on my computer?

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

To be honest, I think that this should be kept in the open forum so that people can see the responses.

The elements I have been installing are:

• Dreamweaver CS6
• Photoshop CS6
• Acrobat 10

Bearing this in mind and the fact that my organisation is not participating in the 'cloud', the display of the other elements in the 'master' collection is plainly advertising, especially when it says download trial version; please don't step around this with semantics - this is advertising.

The primary problems with these products are:

• We have paid a lot of money for this software to make our life easier - it didn't, really.  I had to spend a lot of time online (both internet and telephone) just to get the products installed.  Your site seems to be split into sub-domains which make it rather difficult to get what you need when installing or updating software without having to read reams of infromation, hunt for that missing tip or have access to information that may not readily be available in a large organisation such as mine.
• In my case I was given a software licence key, that's all.  Only by speaking to someone in India (though they were extremely courteous and most were helpful I did have difficulty understanding some of what they were saying) did I manage to download and then install the software.  Not everyone has access to their companies account with Adobe - like me.  One of the help desk gentlemen added me to my company's accounts management list so that I could register and download the software from your site.  Initially, though, I downloaded and installed the trial version which did allow the entry of a key - why did this not work?  Wouldn't this have been far more simple?
• The AAM doesn't work for me; the firewalls my PC sits behind are heavily restricted, as I would guess are many other's.  To this end I attempted to download the patches manually.  They failed to install, giving a rather ambiguous 'WARNING: DW065: Display requirements not met for {A4ED5E53-7AA0-11E1-BF04-B2D4D4A5360E} Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 12.0.0.0' error in the log file.
• When installing Acrobat 10 it removed my preferences for my default PDF Reader; Why?  I didn't ask it to.  Thankfully I reinstated the previous default through the OS.  This isn't a choice that Adobe should be making on my behalf - it should ask me.
• I also don't believe that there should be any services running on my PC if they're not necessary.  Just before you say that they: '...are necessary for the updating and registering of...', they are only necessary, based on the other posts, to update (which doesn't work for me, as stated) and check a user's validity with Adobe.  Checking my validity with Adobe can be done when the program starts so there's no need for a services that further slows my PC down.
• Dreamweaver CS 6 has so many bugs that it's been a backward step moving from MX 2004.  Why?  I would have thought that you'd learn your lessons from the likes of Microsoft and not release your products before they work properly.
• More of a minor niggle with Photoshop is the plush interface; why?  Surely your users are paying for performance rather than unnecessary cosmetics.  The first thing I did when I started Photoshop was to turn off as many of the bells and whistles as possible; they're completely pointless.  I haven't used Photoshop much but will probably, based on the issues with Dreamweaver, come across a lot of problems (I'll report them here when I do).

To be honest, I've lost a lot of faith with Adobe.  I use Dreamweaver a lot, as well as Photoshop, but should have stuck with the previous Photoshop CS(1) and DreamWeaver MX 2004, both of which actually worked relatively well.

I look forward to your reply.

Paul.

PS: Your forum occassionally crashes giving me continuous 'Internal Server Error' messages.

Addendum:

Just for further info, the error code fed back by the patch installer is U44M2I218 ... and that's it; not really very useful, especially as I can't find the error code anywhere on the adobe site.

Message was edited by: mandelbrot - additional information.

[Ken G. Rice]

We have paid a lot of money for this software to make our life easier - it didn't, really.  I had to spend a lot of time online (both internet and telephone) just to get the products installed.  Your site seems to be split into sub-domains which make it rather difficult to get what you need when installing or updating software without having to read reams of infromation, hunt for that missing tip or have access to information that may not readily be available in a large organisation such as mine.

I agree that the Adobe website is not always easy to navigate. Here is how to install or update products. If there is something else that is not clear please let me know.

There are two ways to find the software to install.

1. Go to http://www.adobe.com. Move your mouse over the Products link in the top left and from the drop-down menu click the link for "See all products". Choose the product you are interested in and go to its product page. On the right side of the page you should see links for Try and Buy. This will lead you to downloading the product as a trial or for purchasing a perpetual license (serial number).
2. Go to https://creative.adobe.com/apps. Sign in with your Adobe ID, or create one from the Plans page https://creative.adobe.com/plans. Click on the Try (for free trial) or Download (for paid subscription) for a product. The first time you will need to download and install the Adobe Application Manager (AAM). After that AAM will launch, download and install the product.

There are several ways to receive updates.

• AAM will check once every 24 hours for updates. If there are updates it will prompt you to install them.
• Launch any Adobe product and from the menu choose Help > Updates. This will launch AAM in update mode and check for updates across all products. For example if you launch Photoshop and check for updates, but have InDesign installed and it has an update you will have the option to install the InDesign update.
• Go to the Product Updates page http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/ and install the update. This page does not cover Creative Cloud subsriber-only product update, but does include all normal updates, bug fixes, and security updates.

In my case I was given a software licence key, that's all.  Only by speaking to someone in India (though they were extremely courteous and most were helpful I did have difficulty understanding some of what they were saying) did I manage to download and then install the software.  Not everyone has access to their companies account with Adobe - like me.  One of the help desk gentlemen added me to my company's accounts management list so that I could register and download the software from your site.  Initially, though, I downloaded and installed the trial version which did allow the entry of a key - why did this not work?  Wouldn't this have been far more simple?

From who did you just receive "a software licence key, that's all"? Do you mean a redemption code that you entered on the Redeem page here https://creative.adobe.com/redeem or do you mean a serial number? Or did you receive the serial number from an Adobe reseller or from someone at work? I ask because if you purchased a serial number from Adobe then instructions are provided for product download. If you entered a redemption code then afterwards you just had to sign in to the Creative Cloud and begin downloading products from the Apps page https://creative.adobe.com/apps.

You say "I downloaded and installed the trial version which did allow the entry of a key - why did this not work?" When launching the product you can do:

• Begin a 30-day trial by signing in with your Adobe ID
• "License this software" by entering a serial number for a perpetual license
• Activate a paid subscription by signing in with your Adobe ID.

The perpetual license and the subscription are two different options.

The AAM doesn't work for me; the firewalls my PC sits behind are heavily restricted, as I would guess are many other's.  To this end I attempted to download the patches manually.  They failed to install, giving a rather ambiguous 'WARNING: DW065: Display requirements not met for {A4ED5E53-7AA0-11E1-BF04-B2D4D4A5360E} Adobe Dreamweaver CS6 12.0.0.0' error in the log file.

• This help document covers firewall issues near the bottom: http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-network-issues.html.
• If you have firewall issues then contact Customer Support from here http://helpx.adobe.com/contact/. The phone number is 800-833-6687 and hours are Monday-Friday, 5am-7pm PST; or live chat with an agent: http://tinyurl.com/8kquhso
• I can have the AAM team follow up with you regarding the Dreamweaver patches. Please email me at kenrice@adobe.com with your Adobe ID email.

When installing Acrobat 10 it removed my preferences for my default PDF Reader; Why?  I didn't ask it to.  Thankfully I reinstated the previous default through the OS.  This isn't a choice that Adobe should be making on my behalf - it should ask me.

Reproduced this issue on Windows 7 and posted in the Acrobat forum here http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1086571. Please add any additional information to the Acrobat post.

I also don't believe that there should be any services running on my PC if they're not necessary.  Just before you say that they: '...are necessary for the updating and registering of...', they are only necessary, based on the other posts, to update (which doesn't work for me, as stated) and check a user's validity with Adobe.  Checking my validity with Adobe can be done when the program starts so there's no need for a services that further slows my PC down.

I will pass your feedback on to the AAM team.

Dreamweaver CS 6 has so many bugs that it's been a backward step moving from MX 2004.  Why?  I would have thought that you'd learn your lessons from the likes of Microsoft and not release your products before they work properly.

Please be specific about "so many bugs" for Dreamweaver. You can post Dreamweaver issues in the Dreamweaver forum here http://forums.adobe.com/community/dreamweaver/dreamweaver_general.

More of a minor niggle with Photoshop is the plush interface; why?  Surely your users are paying for performance rather than unnecessary cosmetics.  The first thing I did when I started Photoshop was to turn off as many of the bells and whistles as possible; they're completely pointless.  I haven't used Photoshop much but will probably, based on the issues with Dreamweaver, come across a lot of problems (I'll report them here when I do).

Please share your Photoshop feedback in the Photoshop forum here http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop/general.

Just for further info, the error code fed back by the patch installer is U44M2I218 ... and that's it; not really very useful, especially as I can't find the error code anywhere on the adobe site.

I have asked about the U44M2I218 error and will reply once I know its meaning, and how to resolve the problem.

[OldRhind]

I agree with Mandelbrot, this should be in the open forum, but it seems to be alive here so I'll add one more comment. My understaning is that AAM is "required" for updating, required by Adobe that is. However, I just discovered by chance that there is an update to what used to be Adobe Camera Raw, only it's now known as DNGConverter. So why didn't AAM pick this up. Does this mean that AAM doesn't do anything useful until I find an update for myself? If it doesn't then the only reason it has been installed is so that Adobe can monitor my use of my program, CS PS6.

David

[little_henners]

it doesn't work properly, my AAM can't see that I have PS installed

[Ken G. Rice]

@little_henners - Did you install Photoshop as a product trial prior to signing up for the Creative Cloud?

[little_henners]

I'm not even using creative cloud, I have production premium but it's the education version and I'm still waiting ot get my serial from adobe, but AAM sees everything else I have but seems to think PS isn't installed on my machine

came to this thread googling to find out why adobe application manager was installed on my machine in the first place and how come it doesn't show in my programs list in windows

[HughLaFollette]

It is time for Adobe to do the right thing, dump the manager as designed.  Using a so-called update manager as a poor excuse for advertising their products, is unconscionable.

I plan to dump my two remaining Adobe products within the next 3-6 months.  I am tired of this silliness, exacerbated by their unwillingness to admit and remedy their terrible boo-boo.

The only way to stop such businesses practices is to make them pay by losing business.

[Ken G. Rice]

@HughLaFollette - Do you have a Creative Cloud trial of subscription?

This thread is in the Creative Cloud forum and so my focus has been on answering questions to support Creative Cloud customers. We do not advertise. We list all of the programs available for download and install that are on the Apps page here https://creative.adobe.com/apps. The reason customers joined the Creative Cloud is to get these programs.

Are you using an individual product with a serial number?

In that case you should not see the other products listed. Once you enter your serial number AAM should just prompt you if there is an update.

I really am honestly confused here. If you have a specific complaint please state it.

[HughLaFollette]

How more specific can I be -- or for that matter the hundreds of similar complaints from other users!

I have licenses for all Adobe products I have.  Half of them aren't listed.  What IS listed are products I do not have -- ones you want me to download/purchase.

Your response will speed my exit from Adobe.  Shame.  I used Acrobat since (I believe) version 3, and Dreamweaver for 6 years.

[Ken G. Rice]

@HughLaFollette - Thank you for being more specific saying you "have licenses for all Adobe product" that you have. As I mentioned before this is the Creative Cloud forum. The focus here is on using AAM with the Creative Cloud. Are you a member of the Creative Cloud? If not, are you launching AAM from your computer and seeing links to download products not installed on your computer?

[Ken G. Rice]

@mandelbrot - Here is the response I received regarding the U44M2I218 error from the AAM team. You can email me the logs at kenrice@adobe.com:

Error U44M2I218 is an IPC error generally displayed while applying updates in standalone mode (not using the updater) but the patch is already applied on the user machine.  To confirm this you could ask user to provide the installer and updater log files from the following locations:   

Installer logs location:

• Winx86: <Root Drive>\Program files\Common files\Adobe\Installers
• Winx64: <Root Drive>\Program files (x86)\Common files\Adobe\Installers
• Mac: <Root Volume>/Library/Logs/Adobe/Installers

Updater logs location:

• Win XP: <User>\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0
• Vista/Win7: <%localappdata%>\Adobe\AAMUpdater\1.0
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AAMUpdater/1.0    

Please zip the complete 1.0 folder and send it across.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

@Ken: Thanks for getting back Ken, we're giving you a hard time of it at the moment.

...and it's going to continue, I'm afraid...

(To agree with other posters as to the reason why we are here...)

The problem with a forum like this is that most users come to it to resolve their issues based on the text that they enter in a search engine like Google, irrespective of the particular context of the area.  This thread is basically discussing the faults of the AAM which is common to all/most of the CS6 products.  So, despite the fact that this particular forum is for the cloud, a lot of people seem to be having the issue that AAM is not working for them.

It's more of a fog than a cloud.

Regarding the software license: my company handed me an Adobe License Certificate.  On this there are three products each with 6 licenses (god help us!).  My organisation is South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the UK.  I'll email the certificate number to you and you can get my details from that, Ken, though you should be able to track this via my username in the forums.  Each product comes with a bulk serial number which, after downloading the initial trial version from the site, did not work when entered into the serial number box on the setup.  After contacting Adobe and speaking with a couple of people they told me that I had to download from https://licensing2.adobe.com.  It was for the licensing site that I needed a company account, which probably would be unavailable to most users [who have the power to install the software themselves], unless they are the fund holders.

I've uninstalled everything Adobe from my system (including Flash Player) and have just reinstalled it all (except Flash and Acrobat 10 at the moment).  I also ran the CleanerTool just to make sure it's as clean as I can get it.  Incidentally, uninstalling all Adobe products caused an issue with SQL Server Management Studio 2008 preventing it from working properly.  I didn't make any notes on this, I'm more concerned about getting this junk working; it's actually eating into my development time really badly.

Now I've run the 12.0.2 updater for Dreamweaver CS6.  It gets to 65% then stops running with 5 seconds on the clock and no way of cancelling the upgrade bar killing the process (should have stuck with the standard OS installer).

This has happened every time I've ran the patch, and so, as I believe most others would do, I've ran the patch again, obviously resulting in the error message that I asked you about before.  It would be extremely useful for your users to know what all of these codes mean so they can make educated guesses as to why this junk has failed again.

When I attempted to run the patch for Adobe Photoshop I get the following:

And then clicking the link (Adobe Application Manager) takes the user to http://www.adobe.com/special/errorpages/404.html.  Excellent!

So, I've found AAM 6.2 and installed it.  When I run it it updates itself again...

And there are your advertisements for Adobe Products, as I'm not a member of the cloud.

Now when I try to run the patch again I get the same screen as above.  No extra log files.  I have mailed the log files for Dreamweaver to you, however.

Poor performance considering that the updater should have checked itself before it attempted to apply any patches.

I'm not going to reinstall or use this junk until someone can provide a straightforward solution to allow me to patch these products properly.

[Jeff A Wright]

Mandelbrot please see your private messages as I have sent you a message to try to work with you directly regarding your update issues. 

This thread in general seems to have a wide range of topics covered within it.  The original poster was requesting how to remove the Adobe Application Manager as they some how installed it while also installing Adobe Reader.

In regards to the discussion about the Adobe Application Manager giving you the option to download apps instead of the update screen.  This has already been covered in http://forums.adobe.com/message/4732766#4732766 and the feedback has already been passed on to our Engineering team.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

Hi Jeff,

Once again, I'll state that this should be kept in the public forum rather than email or PMs - this ha the potential .  As such, I'm going to continue this discussion in a separate thread in the Downloading, Installing, Setup forums.

Paul.

(PS: anyone who's interested, please feel free to follow the thread and add constructive comments)

[Jeff A Wright]

Mandelbrot I am responding to your private message right now.  If you would like to start a new thread I would be happy to respond there.  This current thread though appears to have a wide range of topics and really needs to be branched out to several different discussions.  This is why I sent a private message to work with you directly.

The original post on this thread again was how to remove the Adobe Application Manager after somehow installing it while installing Adobe Reader.  There is an additional topic regarding error 1316 when trying to install Photoshop Elements.   Next there is the discussion of the offering of downloading and installing the Applications through the Adobe Application Manager.  Then finally we have the discussion regarding failures to apply updates.

I would recommend starting a new thread and then posting to this discussion the URL for the thread related to the failure to apply updates.  We can both certainly summarize our discussion and the steps that have been suggested for you to follow there.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

Hi Jeff,

The thread is the link in the post (continue this discussion in a separate thread in the Downloading, Installing, Setup forums😞

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4796346#4796346

Paul.

[Jeff A Wright]

Thanks Mandelbrot now I can focus on solving your current difficulties and then we can get this thread sorted out a bit later today.

[mmk7894]

I probably am not really adding anything to this discussion but I wanted to write just to express my serious outrage that Adobe would install this application manager under the guise of merely updating something I already had, and then use it to install a bunch of stuff I DON"T OWN and don't intend to own, especially now!  This is a major league customer alienator.  And I agree with others that I shouldn't have to install yet another Adobe product in order to get rid of this.  I think Adobe has violated professional ethics in multiple ways:

a.  My updater notice said I had a routine update, but when it finished, in fact I had an entirely new program, not an update at all.

b.  That new program then claimed it was checking on the status of programs I already had, and in fact it installed a bunch of trial versions of things I don't have and don't intend to buy, so that I had to spend my afternoon uninstalling all of it.

c.  That program also doesn't show up in my control Panel list of programs so I can't uninstall it via Windows as I do any other correctly installed programs.  there is no way to white-wash this.  Everything about it tells me that Adobe is desparate for money and is trying to mis-use its faithful customer base to get some.

What is most shocking to me is that this just happened to me now, in October 2012, and the conversation I am responding to occurred two years ago.  That suggests to me tha Adobe doesn't apparently care whether it is helping or hindering its customers because even after all the complaints that they got two years ago, they are still doing the same thing.  Still being dishonest about what the application manager is and why it is here, still not  installing it in a way that Windows can see and that can be uninstalled via Windows.  Totally dishonest and underhanded, even after receiving all these complaints.

[God_I_hate_Adon_tbe]

Hi mmk,

Though I thought I'd never do this, I'm actually going to semi-defend Adobe here!  When you got the AAM screen up with the different trial programs listed, did you click any of the buttons to the right of them?  I don't believe that the programs would install by themselves, though it's not explanatory as to why they are there.

Alegedley they are trials, but irrespective of what Adobe do say, it's still advertising; the programs on the list are available from Adobe's website and the majority are most likely not installed by every user, and therefore, without any inventive or semantic side-stepping, advertising from a premium package.

Paul.