Vista will not let me delete Acrobat!

Factual Questions
1

I am so pissed. I do not know, and do not care, why Vista will not let me delete my Acrobat 8.0 folder. It came pre-installed, and by God I am going to exterpiate anything and everything associated with Adobe now if I live.

Tell me how to get rid of it.

I tried deleting it through “Programs and Features” It “mysteriously” stopped partway through, and refuses to go beyond that point, which is obviously those Adobe assholes not actually letting me delete it.

I tried to delete it manually file by file. Vista, however, does not allow this and pops up saying I HAVE TO HAVE PERMISSION TO DELETE MY OWN GODDAMN FILES! (Yes, before you ask, I am logged in as an administrator, which is the only GODDAMN account on this GODDAMN computer.)

I downloaded Microsoft Windows Install Cleaup. This unregistered the Adobe files, but they are still effin there. The systems sometimes, and sometimes does not, recognize that they exist.

2

Reinstall it, then uninstall again.

Adobe doesn’t give a fig if you keep their program on your computer.

3

I can’t reinstall it because I never installed it in the first place. A trial version came with the computer. I don’t even use Acrobat, but by God I want my Gig of hard drive back.

4

I had the same pronlem on XP, so maybe it isn’t a Vista issue.

Anyway, I ended up deleting files manually, i.e. not uninstalling. Then cleaning the registry, then deleting the files I couldn’t delete the first time around. Rinse and repeat.

5

Run the command prompt as an administrator and delete the folder from there, that ought to work.

  • Start
    type “cmd”, right click “run as administrator”

  • navigate to the location which contains the acrobat folder
    for example you might type “cd c:\program files\adobe”

  • delete the contents of the folder and all subfolders
    type “del/s name of folder”

6

You may also find that Adobe Acrobat has a process running. They have a “helper” app that often stays resident, so take a look through the processes running in Task Manager and kill any that might be part of Acrobat (in Vista, you can right-click and select properties to find the executable path to check). Acrobat and QuickTime are both notorious for leaving resident apps running despite your explicit instructions.

7

Adobe has bee4n linked with certain vulnerabilities which in turn are linked with botnet problems. I just recently had to extricate my employer’s PC from a botnet usurper more blatant than you would ever imagine; we figure they got in through a copy of Adobe Air that just appeared one day.

Anyway, that being said, here are instructions for enabling the semi-secret Uber-Administrator account in Windows Vista, after which you can then delete whatever you like.

BE SURE to INACTIVATE it again when you are done!!

Enable the Administrator Account

  1. Open the command prompt with Administrative privileges by opening the Start Menu, and typing cmd in the search box, and then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter or click the Start orb, All Programs, Accessories, right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.

  2. Type the following in the command prompt and press Enter after:

    net user administrator /active:yes

  3. Restart your computer and logon as Administrator.

Note: You might want to set a password for the administrator’s account for at least a little protection.

Then disable the Administrative Account:

To disable the Administrative account run the Net User command demonstrated above while logged on an account with administrative privileges but not as the Administrator account and replace yes with no.

NB: This is in case the regular admin thing that gladtobeblazed above mentioned doesn’t work.

8

Just curious: what other apps will read an AA file?

9

You might need to take ownership of the folder, and set permissions on it before you can delete it.
some instructions

10

I’m pretty sure that all this does is disable UAC prompts; it doesn’t give you any further capabilities that a normal Administrator-with-popups doesn’t have. Am I wrong?

11

Foxit PDF Reader is good.