Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 Problem on Mac (resolved)

Submitted by Richard Sheppard on February 20, 2007 - 1:00pm

Acrobat Reader enable/disable plugins via the Get Info dialogNote: this issue disappeared for the author, after upgrading to Adobe Reader 8.1.

I was being driven around the bend trying to resolve a problem with Acrobat Reader 8 in that it kept crashing within 15 seconds of launching (scroll down to read more).

Eventually, in the Adobe forums, I found that others were having the same problem and it was due to the update plug-in. Most likely some sort of privileges problem, according to another poster in the forum.

The solution given by people in the forum was to choose to remove the Update plug-in by removing it from the application's package. However, I found that there was an extra pane in the Get Info dialog that allows you to add, remove, enable or disable plug-ins. I think it's a more sophisticated way to deal with it.

Comments

Anonymous (not verified)

March 16, 2007 - 1:56pm

I din't noticed the extra pane in the "Get Info" dialog.

Anonymous (not verified)

March 27, 2007 - 5:12am

Thank you, thank you, thank you. This has been driving me crazy for weeks. I was getting ready to trash 8 and go back to 7.

You've made a not-so-techy Baby Boomer very happy!

Anonymous (not verified)

May 12, 2007 - 10:41pm

Hi,

I downloaded Adobe Reader. I disabled the plugin in the 'get info' options. That didn't work. I erased the folders in the applications package. Adobe reader still closes 5-10 seconds after launch. I have a macbook pro, dual core. Adobe Acrobat and Reader are useless to me now. Since the disable plug-in option doesn't work, I don't know what will, because I have tried everything that I have read in these online forums. Nothing seems to work - not re-installing, not disabling, renaming..nothing. This has to be fixable, somehow..doesn't it?

Richard Sheppard

May 13, 2007 - 9:33am

Hi,

I only have one Mac and it's a G5 dual processor.

Another screenshot of the get info box of Acrobat with the updater.acroplugin circledThe screen shot you see was taken on it. I haven't re-enabled "Updater.acroplugin" since I originally posted this blog entry, until now and note that Acrobat still crashes 10-15 seconds after I launch it.

Why yours is not working, I have no idea.

What happens if you hold down the shift key immediately after launching Acrobat?

By the way, if you sign up, rather than posting anonymously:

  1. your post will be published immediately, rather than waiting for when I get around to looking at the moderation queue;
  2. you will be automatically subscribed to the topic and notified when there are any updates to the topic.

Anonymous (not verified)

May 12, 2007 - 10:43pm

Thank you

Richard Sheppard

May 13, 2007 - 9:34am

Anonymous (not verified)

May 17, 2007 - 6:33am

Stupid updater.

Anonymous (not verified)

June 4, 2007 - 1:37am

THANKZ!!! I DID IT AND WORKED PERFECTLY

I DID IT ON A MACBOOK COREDUO

Anonymous (not verified)

July 24, 2007 - 2:41am

I'm glad the 8.1 Reader is working for you now. Adobe has dismal Mac support for Reader (and their other applications as well I might add).

I still can't get 8.1 to work. It crashes as always.

Furthermore, they do not include an install log at the very least, so complete removal of all Reader components is practically impossible.

If you delete the application, and the Prefs files, and the Application Support files, in both root and user Libraries, it will still run the 8.1 installer when you open a .pdf document (providing you haven't changed the default app for .pdf docs in the finder). This tells me there are still other Reader files spread throughout my system. Shame on you Adobe.

TPG

Anonymous (not verified)

April 17, 2008 - 12:39pm

Thanks a lot for the tip !!! it works perfectly now !! i always worked with preview beacuse i couldn't fix the pb but now its such a relief !!!!!!
Thank you ;-)

Anonymous (not verified)

May 13, 2008 - 12:11pm

I downloaded another software program and then I could not open pdf files on my browser?

Please advise.

Richard Sheppard

May 13, 2008 - 12:22pm

You shouldn't have downloaded that other program.

Anonymous (not verified)

May 25, 2008 - 3:28am

THANK YOU!! unchecking the updater allowed acrobat 8 professional and reader to properly work in leopard /cs3.

Anonymous (not verified)

May 31, 2008 - 2:46pm

You guys are absolutely fantastic! I will not have sort this out....until I've found your comment. Great work! Thanks. It does work.

Anonymous (not verified)

June 6, 2008 - 4:14pm

This had been driving me nuts. I was using Skim (http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/) for a while, but found myself missing Acrobat. Familiarity, I guess... I might try Skim again if I ever need the additional functionality it provides. Just thought I'd plug it incase anyone is looking for an alternative to Acrobat. Thanks again for the info on resolving the crashing issue.

Anonymous (not verified)

June 12, 2008 - 6:01pm

please please please can someone tell me how to remove adobe 8 from my macbook? I've looked everywhere for uninstallers and tried to run a script to clean all cs3 programs off but nothing works. Thanks.

CarSez (not verified)

February 21, 2013 - 3:33pm

What about this program? It doesn't say "plugins" on my Info panel. Can you help me get this up and running again without crashing? P.S. I can't reinstall program as all my items were destroyed. Thank you!

Add new comment

More information about text formats

Filtered HTML

  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd><p><img><blockquote><h1><h2><h3><h4><h5><h6>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.
By submitting this form, you accept the Mollom privacy policy.