Comments on: Upgrade to / install Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 centrally using Active Directory group policies.

By: Chris Bailey

Chris Bailey — Tue, 25 May 2010 14:16:53 +0000

Update – did what I said – it worked – 9.1 is uninstalled and 9.3 is now installed – only issue is that I get the dreaded “The Adobe Acrobat/Reader that is running cannot be used to view PDF files in a web browser…”.

Before this upgrade I was able to open PDFs just fine on my test machine in a browser… some posts I saw said it has to do with an old installation directory… could this be because I re-created the GPO and am not modifying the exisiting one? (the one that points to the old location so I had to recreate)

Obviously if I cant get this to work I’ll have to stick with the old version… kind of unfortunate considering how many vulnerabilities it has…

By: Chris Bailey

Chris Bailey — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:10:05 +0000

I have only been at this company for a year, so I didnt have a say in where this package was originally.

So I was thinking over the weekend…. if I was to delete the existing 9.1 GPO (that points to the soon to be non-existant share) – recreate it, pointing it to the new location for 9.1. After this I will do what the article says with the 9.3.1 installation package as an upgrade to 9.1.

When this is done, in theory… the new GPO should uninstall 9.1 and install 9.3.1…. I will test this today in my test OU to see if I can get that working. Thanks for the reply… I am going to discuss some DFS stuff with my CIO also to choose a better location for our installation directory.

By: Mats Hellman

Mats Hellman — Fri, 21 May 2010 20:23:57 +0000

I’m not sure what’s going on there but you should be able to do an upgrade GPO, so is upgrades from 9.1 to 9.3. The upgrade install should uninstall the old version. Also check your eventlog to see why it keeps reinstalling the 9.3 version.
Also you’d be better of to put any GPO installs to an DFS share. Otherewise when you move an package from one server to another it will reinstall the package.
I’ll help if I can, old post or not.

By: Chris Bailey

Chris Bailey — Fri, 21 May 2010 18:40:20 +0000

I know this is a pretty old post, so if you dont respond, no worries… we have just moved out application deployment folder to a new machine (decomissioned the old machine). So as it is now, I have a Reader 9.1 GPO pulling from the old source that installs on users desktops… I want to modify that to install 9.3.1 but I cant modify the old GPO because it points to a non-existant folder where Reader used to be….

So I tried to just create a new one… to install the new reader… but it seems to install EVERYTIME I reboot a machine, and Adobe Reader 9.1 shows on the desktop still (we keep the link on the desktop) but its greyed out, Reader 9.3 works… but once I reboot it re-runs the installatino over and over again…

Any suggestions?

By: Mats Hellman

Mats Hellman — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:15:18 +0000

Try to run the package with the Sysinternals tool PsExec and run the MSI package from one of your clients. Using PsExec will allow you to run msiexec with the local System account(the same is used when installing from a GPO) this way you’ll make sure the MSI works as it should. If this works then we need to take a look at the group policies. You can get PsExec from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx.
Run PsExec:

psexec.exe -sid “msiexec.exe -i \\Server\Share\AdobeREader.msi

Let me know how if it works.

By: Greyshark

Greyshark — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:01:43 +0000

I noticed that if we use local administrator to uninstall the package adobe reader 8, then once i reboot, and unlink the PC from OU and link to another OU with adobe9 , it failed to install, but from log on status, we can see the application of removal take place, but not the installation.

Any idea ?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Hmmm, I can’t find the Software installation policy tab?…

By: Adam Bunker

Adam Bunker — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

The serial is in the .mst that i setup with the customization wizard, so that’s not it. I’ve figured out that the problem is that rather than just “assigned”, the package must be setup as advanced. In properties, under the modifications tab, the .mst must be added. A slight oversight that caused my install to fail every time. But it works as of 5 minutes ago! Thanks for the help looking into it.

By: AC

AC — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

After I’ve pushed the Adobe Reader 9, I’ve lost the icon on my PDF-files… I’ve really tried everything….
When i install the same package locally, it works – but when i do it with a domain user – the icon is gone…
I’ve postet a question on Exchange Experts – but I really hope i can correct the “error” thru the AD.

Help?

By: Adam Bunker

Adam Bunker — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Great guide! I’ve tried replicating this on several test computers in my Win2008 / WinXP (SP3) environment to deploy a new installation of Acrobat Pro 9 to no avail. The Application logs on the target computers report an error eventID 1013, then a Fatal error during installation eventID 102. These very same computers are assigned a policy to install Adobe CS3 via script, and it works without a problem. Any ideas? Thanks for the help.