Problem with Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0

[JohnnyO]

I downloaded and installed the free Adobe Reader 6.0. However, I am having problems accessing this program in order to view PDF files. What is causing this problem??? After a long wait in getting this program started (after clicking the icon), I get a small window with the message "Could not find Adobe Acrobat."

I also get a small window that has a white X in a red circle that says "the filename, directory name, or volume label sytax is incorrect."

I am using Windows XP Media Edition on my computor.

Can it be related to my download of SP2??? I have uninstalled and re-installed this program about 3 times with no success. I know that I have plenty of memory in my computor so I know that this should not be the problem. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[pip22]

The shortcut for it could be missing it's link information or has the wrong link information. Anyway, here's a quick way to check it out.
Do a search for ACRORD32.EXE on C drive. If found, double-click it and Acrobat should start. If that works, delete the desktop icon and replace it with the one in the search box. If the problem occurs when you try to open a PDF file in Explorer, then it's obviously something else altogether that's at fault and I haven't a clue I'm afraid.

[pip22]

Forgot to warn you. If you do find that my suggestion works, only put a shorcut on the desktop, not the actual file you searched for!
Right-click the file in the search window, drag onto desktop and select 'create shortcut here'. Rename the shortcut to 'Adobe Reader 6.0'.

[JohnnyO]

Thanks for your help Pip but it didn't work. Hopefully someone else will come up with a solution to this problem.

[Miz]

I can only give you the solution that worked for me.

After fighting with Reader v. 6 for a week or two, I gave up, uninstalled it and installed v. 5. I was having the same problems you are and could not make it work consistently. On the rare occasions when it did open a PDF file, it took forever.

I've since found a lot of people posting to various boards with the same problem with the new version.

If you want to go the uninstall-the-new/install-the-old route, you can download v.5 from Old Version.

[JohnnyO]

Thanks for your help Miz but it didn't work for me. I uninstalled Adobe Acrobat 6.0 and then rebooted my computer. Then I downloaded and installed Adobe Acrobat reader 5.05. I attempted to read a PDF file off the Internet with no success.

I got the error message"Could not find Acrobat External Window Handler." Thanks for your suggestion though.

[Miz]

If you're trying to get Internet Explorer to open PDF files (without your having to start Reader separately), open Reader, go to Edit>Preferences, click on Options in the left-hand pane and in the right-hand pane make sure that "Display PDF in browser" is checked. Check any other options you want, as well.

Mine opens within Internet Explorer and everything on that tab is checked except "Use page cache."

[JohnnyO]

I tried what you suggested and I still get the error message "Could not find Acrobat External Window Handler." A thought just occured to me. Could the fact that I have a "POP-UP Blocker cause me to have these problems with Adobe Reader, regardless of what version I use? I don't see why it should but I could be wrong. Miz, you've been a great help. Thanks again.

[Miz]

Just remembered....since you have SP2, open IE, go to Tools>Manage Add-ons. You should have "AcroIEHlprObjClass" in that list. Click on it and look at the bottom of that window to make sure the "Enable" radio button is selected. I vaguely remember having to enable that before Reader would work with IE the way I wanted it to.

[JohnnyO]

Miz, thanks again. I did your last suggestion and when I checked found that this add-on was already enabled. In researching my problem on the web, I found the following link to the Adobe Support Knowledgebase which specifically addresses this problem. I have not tried any of the suggestions as of yet but will do so tomorrow after I have carefully read all of the instructions. Hopefully there is a solution here that will fix my problem.

[Miz]

Please let me know if you get it fixed. Plenty of other people would like to know, too.

[JohnnyO]

Miz, I finally was able to get Adobe Acrobat to work (version 5.0). I followed the instructions in the Adobe Support Knowledgebase but following those instructions did not work for me. I finally took it upon myself to do the following in addition to what was in the instructions:

• First, I did a search in my C drive for all files containing the word Adobe
• I then deleted any Adobe Acrobat file in my C Drive
• Then I cleaned out my temporary folder. My Search did indicate some Adobe related files in there
• I also ran Ad-Aware 6 to get rid of any spyware
• Finally, I re-installed Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and rebooted my computer

I'm not sure if just one of the above actions or a combination thereof is what "fixed" my problem but something worked. I also installed Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5.0 because it was after I downloaded Adobe version 6 that I started to have all of these problems in the first place.

[Miz]

Thanks for letting me know. Quite a hassle, too. I never did figure out what Adobe added to Reader that was supposed to make it ever so much better....and that ended up hosing so many computers. Maybe if I'd ever gotten v. 6 to run, I could have figured it out.