Acrobat 7.0 Behaves as OS Shell (XP Pro SP2)

Topic

New Reply

After installing Acrobat 7.0 (which has worked on other computers) using a User Admin account, whenever I attempt to start an application (even rundll32) Acrobat starts and tells me that “Acrobat cannot open ‘application.exe’ …”. This behavior begins right at startup for the startup apps and applets.

Interestingly, when I created a blank Word or Excel document on the desktop (right-click | New) and double-clicked on them, the applications opened just fine.

Also, Acrobat does not exhibit this behavior when I log into the Administrator account. So I began to think that this is a registry problem.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Reply | Quote

Replies

It seems that the .exe extension has become associated with Adobe 7. See if post 614,583 helps.

Reply | Quote

Hans,

Yes, this is what I thought as well. I’ll see if that works.

Thanks,

Reply | Quote

My suggestions:

1. Fix file association: save attached file on your hard disk, rename it the way it has .reg extension (get rid of .txt extension) and merge (double-click) it to the Registry.

2. Repair Adobe Acrobat 7: open “Add or Remove Programs” wizard (for instance, from Control Panel), on Currently Installed Programs list select (highlight) “Adobe Acrobat 7”, click Change/Remove button, and when Acrobat Setup starts, select Repair option.

3. Update Adobe Acrobat 7 to v.7.0.8: open Adobe Acrobat and from Help menu select “Check for updates now”. As alternative, you can download appropriate updates from Adobe website. If you have Acrobat v.7; v.7.0.1; v.7.0.2 or v.7.0.3 installed, you must install three updates in following order: update to v.7.0.5; update to v.7.0.7; update to v.7.0.8. Respectively, if you have v.7.0.5 installed, you need two updates; if you have v.7.0.7 – only one update.

Reply | Quote

kaplinb,

Thanks for your suggestions.

1. File association – don’t know what the attached file is but I cannot save it to anything. Right-clicking only gives me a link location save.

2. Repair AA 7.0 – can only perform from AA 7.0 CD since rundll32.exe is intercepted. Even through the CD, tried twice, didn’t help.

3. Update to AA 7.0.8 – cannot because AA intercepts update with the same message.

I’ll see if Hans’s suggestion (above) helps. Right now, I just installed AA 6.0 since it works without a problem.

Regards,

Reply | Quote

After trying Hans’s suggestion and experiencing the same problem regardless of the version of Adobe Acrobat I installed, I bit the bullet and created a new user account, transferred the appropriate files and settings and set-up email accounts. Everything works fine in the new account. So, I’m leaving the remnants of the old account around for a while to make sure everything still works correctly. Then I’ll remove the old account files and free up some disk space.

Reply | Quote