Removing Adobe Garbage

[sortajan]

Adobe 9.0 has been trying (and failing) to update a lot over the past month, and I'm sick of it. So I decided to uninstall it with a mind to install a newer copy.

It won't uninstall. Most of the files are gone with the exception of Identify-H and Identify-V (no extensions) in the Reader 9.0\resource\cmap folder and some garbage in common files for acrobat. I'm the administrator.

I've tried the following:

- CCleaner to clean up registries and delete the Adobe startup nonsense

- Windows Install Cleanup

- I downloaded a program called Unlocker that won't start when installed even after both a computer restart and starting in safe mode. I then uninstalled it.

- Deleting registry keys. There must be thousands of them for Reader and Acrobat. I can delete about half. Apparently I don't have permission for the other half.

- Safe mode

- cmd functions to force delete the files (including attempts in safe mode and with explorer.exe stopped via task manager)

Does anybody have any ideas? I'm losing my freakin' mind here.

 

[Neutron16]

Perfect Uninstaller has a Special Uninstall function with particular script for Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0, which detects left over registry settings and left over files from it's bases and deletes them. You could give it a try.

 

[sortajan]

Neither regular uninstall nor special uninstall worked.

 

[Neutron16]

Neither regular uninstall nor special uninstall worked.

Could you be more specific? Did you run it as Administrator? What errors did it show?
Why exactly it did not worked?

 

[fimble]

I'm Pretty sure that the Adobe Clean Up Scripts ask you during e.g. Photoshop removal if you want to uninstall Adobe Acrobat/Reader at the same time. Not sure if they would give you the Acrobat/Reader option if there is nothing else installed though.

 

[sortajan]

Neither regular uninstall nor special uninstall worked.

Could you be more specific? Did you run it as Administrator? What errors did it show?
Why exactly it did not worked?

It said it completed the removal, but nothing actually changed.

In any case, I downloaded another version of Unlocker for 64bit and it took care of the job. Thanks for the input. Problem solved.

 

[gregrocker]

Reinstall Adobe to uninstall it correctly in Control Panel, or do what I've done on hundreds of Adobe installs: on Edit tab select General Preferences and turn off Updates. Then you'll only be hit up to Update after it opens a .pdf file and needs updating.

If you uncheck it in msconfig or a startup manager and don't change that Preference it will write itself back in, as do many Startup Items. I uncheck them all except AV and gadgets. They are mostly spyware and freeloaders on your RAM, CPU and Startup.

 

[Oaken]

Reinstall Adobe to uninstall it

Ditto that.

What have you been using Adobe 9.0 for exactly? If merely for basic PDF reading and little else then you can replace it with something less cumbersome and problematic???

 

[mach04]

try reinstall Adobe 9 and then install a newer version, it should replace the new files with the older ones, thats how I do it, and had no problems so far.