Thursday, February 15, 2007

When will Adobe get on ball and fix Acrobat problems?

Well dear friends, I am still gnashing my teeth over the Adobe Acrobat Version 8.0 installation/bad serial number problems (NO, THE PROBLEM WAS NOT STAPLES THE MERCHANDISER, IT WAS CLEARLY ADOBE'S!). It left the notebook computer on which I tried to install it unable to install any version, save the hopelessly obsolete version 5.0, my original full version. That was clearly unacceptable. I have been working for the last several weeks to try to fix it, including the installation of VISTA -- neither that nor a registry repair solved the problem. I am reluctant to reformat because that would cause other software recognition issues with MicroSoft which does not, to my knowledge have the activate, deactivate options of Adobe Acrobat, before the Virus acting version 8.0 Professional corrupted it. It left version 7.08 lurking in some unknown spot on my computer and unable to install and I get an annoying message saying that the "patch version" is unrecognizable and contact vendor and other words to that effect. I searched the internet in vain for a fix, sent Adobe a note in their comments section that it was high time they addressed this problem, and then did a Google.com search for people with a similar plight and found the following from another blog which I am shamelessly borrowing to express many of my own sentiments, although my problems (similar to his) were on Acrobat and not on Photoshop.

Suggestions and comments are welcome! I need the program back on my computer, but don't think I should have to wipe out everything else to reinstall. Surely Adobe must by now know of the problem and can graciously and publicly supply a fix!


« The Last Superhero Main The Lions Den »
Adobe December 05, 2006
Back in the good old days, when you paid money for a product or service, the people you bought said product of service from treated you with a certain amount of respect. After all, you were their customers and the people keeping them in business. These days, rather then being treated like valuable clients, customers are treated like thieves and pirates.
A classic case in point is when you go to a movie theatre these days and the finger of suspicion is immediately pointed towards you for being a pirate. You’re not allowed to take pictures of the screen, you are told, and if you do the police will be called and you’ll be ejected from the cinema. I remember the days when people were thought to be innocent until proven guilty, but sadly that right no longer exists.
I recently bought a copy of Photoshop for the office, but when I tried to install it on my laptop as well as my desktop (as sanctioned by the licence) it all went wrong. I was presented with an error screen saying that my copy of photoshop needed to be verified online. I followed the instructions and was told that there was an error and it needed to be verified by phone. Again I followed the instructions, but there was an error and I was told that I needed to speak to an operator.
The verification process was intended to prevent people from pirating Photoshop, but all it was doing was preventing as legitimate user from running the program. It basically locked you out of the software, pointed the finger of blame and forced you to prove that you had the right to run the product.
After filling the serial number and activation code online and on an automated phone service, I was forced to read it out to an operator. You would have hoped that this information would already have been passed to the operator but no such luck. The operator I spoke to tried to fix the problem, but had no luck. In the end he had the nerve to tell me that the problem was with my new MacBook and not the software. Now I’m sorry, but if your anti piracy software is preventing me running Photoshop on my laptop, them the problem is squarely on your shoulders.
Eventually I managed to get the software working, but it cost me a good 2 hours of my time and numerous angry phone calls.
This morning, when I tried to open up Photoshop on my desktop, exactly the same thing happened. I was essentially being told that I was a pirate and that I had to phone Adobe to prove that I wasn’t. Again I rang up, and this time complained about the shoddy customer service Adobe and Photoshop were providing. I wasn’t expecting much in the way of an apology, but I wasn’t expecting to be hung up on, which is exactly what happened. The bastards!
So I’d just like to take the opportunity to tell Adobe and other software vendors that if you start accusing your paying customers of being liars and thieves, you’ve already lost the battle and you don’t deserve our sympathy and support. Because frankly, if you treat your clients like thieves, where is the motivation not to act like one?

Pasted from <http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2006/12/adobe/>

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Constance,

Is your PC set to create restore points? Go to help then type in "restore wizard". You may be able to select a restore point previous to when you installed Acrobat. I try to make a restore point every month or before I make any changes to my PC. This has saved me several times when something over the internet has caused corruption.

RichInMedford

Anonymous said...

not related.

http://www.wikio.com/search=Javier+Solana

Spain was not part of the old Roman Empire, which makes me doubt Solana is the guy, however the ten world regions would do it.

Don't believe we will attack Iran.

Anonymous said...

Kay,

The Roman empire emcompassed the entire known world in its day. If the EU controls the entire world (which looks to be very likely), that would fulfill that criteria.

RichInMedford

Anonymous said...

Sad to say, that is why so many people prefer pirate software. They tend to work better than legal ones. At least you did not buy it and then feel like a criminal.

Anonymous said...

"(the whole world lieth in wickedness...") 1John 5:19 have you been to Micky D's lately? but I feel your pain; futility, vanity, is what we are subjected to.
Yours in Christ;
Setterman

Anonymous said...

Rich,

Look at a map of the old Roman Empire. Asia was a known part of the world. I tend to think of that template and Rome controlling Israel as being the area that the anti-christ will come out of.

Solana is part of the peace talks with Iran that are going on.

Did you notice how we treat N. Korea differntly than others? I tend to think China is telling us what to do, maybe.

3 out of 5 Naval groups are off Iran's shore. Either we are headed for a planned fall or we are totally stupid if we fire a bullet.

China can take down our satilites with EMP and will.

Russian has their finger on energy and can cut off the EU at the spigot, so it looks like Russia and China are in the drivers set based on that alone.

Bye. K

Anonymous said...

I would think that you should be able to use the Windows System Restore feature and go back to the settings prior to installing Adobe.

Here is a link to the Microsoft Website that can help you with it:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306084

Good luck...I enjoy your blogging!

Constance Cumbey said...

Unfortunately, the corruption was caused by the Acrobat 8.0 Professional install. It tried to undo by going back and stopped midway through the process which is where the mischief seemed to occur. I had restore points, but they didn't work, perhaps due to registry changes that may have been corrupted in Acrobat's "go back" process.

Constance Cumbey said...

For the record, I will be on Israel National Radio again Sunday morning, 9 a.m., Eastern Standard Time for a 20 minute interview. You can listen live by going to IsraelNationalRadio.com.

Constance Cumbey said...

That is Sunday Morning, February 18th, 9 a.m.

Anonymous said...

Constance, have you tried using a Registry cleaner?

Anonymous said...

Here are the links for the radio show from this morning.

MP3 Download
Audio Stream

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