Can't install, can't uninstall

[David Mayerovitch]

I'm running XP Home, SP2.

Something has got corrupted on my system and Adobe Reader 8 no longer works.
The .exe file seems to have disappeared. I have tried to download and
reinstall the program from the Adobe site; the download goes fine but the
installation program hangs. I can't uninstall Reader 8 using the Control
Panel's "Add and remove programs" because Reader 8 does not appear on the
program list. Reader 7 does appear on the list, but when I try to uninstall
it, I get a message saying some file necessary to the uninstall is not
present. When I try to download and re-install Reader 7, the same thing
happens: I can't install until I uninstall the remnants of a previous
installation, and I can't do that because some file is missing.

I have rolled back the system using System Restore to a time last week when
Reader 8 was working, but this doesn't help.

I am trapped: Can't reinstall anything until I first uninstall it; can't
uninstall it because something is corrupted.

So I am assuming that I am going to have to remove all remnants of all
versions of the Adobe Reader manually before attempting to reinstall. I
assume that I have to do this:

1. Go to the Registry and remove manually all Adobe entries (the Reader is
the only Adobe product I have on the system).
2. Go to the Program Files folder and remove manually all Adobe folders and
files.

Is this the right thing to do at this point? Any suggestions from someone
more experienced than I in this kind of thing?

Thanks.

David

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I'm running XP Home, SP2.

Something has got corrupted on my system and Adobe Reader 8 no longer
works. The .exe file seems to have disappeared. I have tried to download
and reinstall the program from the Adobe site; the download goes fine but
the installation program hangs. I can't uninstall Reader 8 using the
Control Panel's "Add and remove programs" because Reader 8 does not appear
on the program list. Reader 7 does appear on the list, but when I try to
uninstall it, I get a message saying some file necessary to the uninstall
is not present. When I try to download and re-install Reader 7, the same
thing happens: I can't install until I uninstall the remnants of a
previous installation, and I can't do that because some file is missing.

I have rolled back the system using System Restore to a time last week
when Reader 8 was working, but this doesn't help.

I am trapped: Can't reinstall anything until I first uninstall it; can't
uninstall it because something is corrupted.

So I am assuming that I am going to have to remove all remnants of all
versions of the Adobe Reader manually before attempting to reinstall. I
assume that I have to do this:

1. Go to the Registry and remove manually all Adobe entries (the Reader is
the only Adobe product I have on the system).
2. Go to the Program Files folder and remove manually all Adobe folders
and files.

Is this the right thing to do at this point? Any suggestions from someone
more experienced than I in this kind of thing?

Thanks.

David

That's pretty much what you would need to do, along with clearing the temp
folders and restarting the machine to be sure the registry is refreshed.
For clearing the temp folders, ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) is very helpful.

HTH
-pk

 

[David Mayerovitch]

Thanks very much, Patrick!

David

That's pretty much what you would need to do, along with clearing the temp
folders and restarting the machine to be sure the registry is refreshed.
For clearing the temp folders, ccleaner (www.ccleaner.com) is very
helpful.

HTH
-pk

 

[Ron Badour]

Go to the Adobe 8 folder and look for the uninstall file. It may well exist
even though there isn't an entry in the add/remove screen.