Installed FrameMaker 11 and Acrobat Pro has disappeared

[Guest]

Hi

I use FrameMaker 7.2 with Acrobat Professional version 7 almost every working day.

I downloaded and installed the 30-day version of FrameMaker 11. And having done so,

• All traces of Acrobat Professional v.7 have disappeared.
• My custom Distiller job options have disappeared.
• When I go back to using FrameMaker 7.2 and make a PDF, Distiller no longer gets started by FrameMaker.
• The PDF that is created by FrameMaker 7.2 freezes Adobe Reader 10.

NOWHERE in the FrameMAker 11 installation/sales blurb did I see any caveat about installing on a machine with an existing FrameMaker version, Acrobat Professional  etc.

Considering that my company was thinking of investing heavily in FrameMaker 11 licenses, this is a very bad start!

I would be interested in hearing from anyone who has had similar problems.

Cheers

Phil

[Jeff_Coatsworth]

Sorry you didn’t catch that – best practices always dictates installing on non-production machines for precisely the reason you outline. The main issue is that Acrobat doesn’t play well with multiple versions on the same machine. The standalone version of FM installs a “headless” version of Acrobat Pro. What you’re going to have to do now is completely uninstall all traces of Acrobat from your machine (Distiller & Reader) and reinstall version 7.

[Mike Wickham]

You probably allowed the PDF Creation add-on that comes with FrameMaker

to install. During the installation, there is a place where you can

uncheck this add-on, which wants to install by default.

You can't have multiple installations of Acrobat, Reader, or the PDF

Creation add-on on the same computer. They conflict and cause problems

with each other. Unfortunately, you will probably now have to uninstall

the PDF Creation add-on and Acrobat both, then reinstall only Acrobat.

You may also have to reinstall one or both versions of FrameMaker to fix

it. I'm not sure. You might try uninstalling the add-on and then running

a repair on Acrobat to see if that will fix you up with the most minimal

hassle.

It's really bad that FM installs this add-on without warning of possible

conflicts with existing Acrobat installations. It should check for their

existence before proceeding.

[Guest]

Hi Mike and hi Jeff

Yes I suppose I was being a bit optimistic, and should have done the installation in a sandbox. In my defence, the Frame 11 installation happily installed the PDF Creation add-on without asking me if I wanted it. If I'd been asked, then I would have got suspicious and probably aborted the whole thing - I've had similar problems in the past!

I'm not at all familar with this add-on. I need to enable comments in some PDFs, index others, and secure others. Can I do this with this add-on?

If not, then can I still use a (newer) version of Acrobat Pro? Or do I somehow have to disable the installation of the add-on when installing FrameMaker 11?

Many thanks for you useful comments so far.

Phil

[Arnis_Gubins]

Phil,

The PDFcreator add-on is a stripped down version of Distiller designed to run with FM only. If you already have an Acrobat installation, then this is not required. Unfortunately, as the others have pointed out, the installer doesn't check for an installed version with the default to install it - thus stomping all over your existing installation. You're required to uncheck the "Adobe PDF Creation" option on the installer screen. Note: you might need to click on the Adobe FrameMaker entry to get the option to show (another dumb default).

Also, in going from FM7.2 to the new FM11 version, the location of some of the Distiller default files has been moved and the older version of FM won't find required components for a newer Distiller build (hence, you can't easily go back without uninstalling and re-installing everything).

[Mike Wickham]

For what it's worth, I reported this issue as a bug today. (Though I

think I have reported it before!) Too many people see this issue

unnecessarily, when it could be fixed by a simple redesign of the

installation program.

If anyone else wants to file it, too, you can do so here:

http://www.adobe.com/misc/bugreport.html

[Bob_Niland]

> ... caveat about installing on a machine with an existing FrameMaker version ...

Evidently, Adobe wants existing customers to get so outraged that they try [deleted] instead.

Had you searched this forum prior to lighting the fuse, you'd have found numerous caveats, such as:

http://forums.adobe.com/message/4576386#4576386

My home machine has the same risk as yours, so I only use the web versions of FM11 for testing things.

[Guest]

Yep, "lighting the fuse" describes very well what I did!

Hopefully the hours that I now spend cleaning my machine and hunting down my Acrobat Pro license will make me more nervous and careful the next time.

Cheers

Phil

PS This IS a good forum!

[peter_minneapolis]

philpinder wrote:

Yep, "lighting the fuse" describes very well what I did!

Hopefully the hours that I now spend cleaning my machine and hunting down my Acrobat Pro license will make me more nervous and careful the next time.

Cheers

Phil

PS This IS a good forum!

IMO, the "you should have..." comments here blame the victim.

Later versions of FM and Acrobat did present messages about installing the add-on, though, IIRC, they were not clear. It's likely in your particular case, the existing FM 7.x installation wasn't properly detected by the Acrobat installer; if this is correct, the problem that arose isn't your fault, it's an installer bug.

OK, here's one "you should..." suggestion that can save you time and effort in the future. If you haven't already done it, it's a good idea to register all your Adobe product serial numbers with Adobe, so you can retrieve them efficiently whenever you need any of them ASSUMING that you have an Internet connection AND the Internet is working at that time AND the Adobe servers are working at that time.

Perhaps others on the forum can give some experience-based opinions of using Windows' roll-back feature that establishes the current state of the Windows OS, so the computer can be reset to that point if some operation has gone wrong, as in this FM/Acrobat situation. (I'm a Mac guy, so I forget exactly what it's called.)

I use Windows with Parallels on my Mac, so I use the Parallels system "Snapshot" feature, instead of the Windows feature, to return the virtual Windows machine to an earlier state if necessary. Reverting to a Parallels snapshot removes all work that had been performed within the virtual Windows after that snapshot was created. By comparison, the Windows feature, IIRC, resets the Registry to a specified point, but it doesn't forget changes to exising user files, or creation of new files. So, one caution for using the Parallels snapshot feature is the need to think about what user files might be lost by reverting. With FM running in the virtual Windows, my safety method is to create and modify FrameMaker files on the Mac's file system, which is completely isolated from the virtual Windows system. No files in the Mac file system are affected by restoring an earlier Parallels snapshot.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Bob_Niland]

>IMO, the "you should have..." comments here blame the victim.

I would have throught that goes without saying. The lack of a
Self-destruct enable? [Yes/No]
dialog is either engineering incompetence or marketing malice, and I've always wondered about the latter. Way too many people buy $1000 apps and then are astonishlingly careless about stewardship of the enabling collateral (and probably system backups as well).

> Perhaps others on the forum can give some experience-based opinions

> of using Windows' roll-back feature that establishes the current state of

> the Windows OS, so the computer can be reset to that point if some

> operation has gone wrong, as in this FM/Acrobat situation. (I'm a Mac

> guy, so I forget exactly what it's called.)

Set Restore Point. I've never used it (other than when a driver install forces it). Depending on OS version, it may not make a time capsule of as much as you'd think, or it's going to roll back things you'd rather it didn't (or fail entirely, apparently a bit too common)

Personally, for every app that costs more than the price of a 3-hole binder, I set up such a binder for the app, including all collateral (codes, media, etc.). All the binders are kept together. I build my own PCs, and completely re-install from time to time, so having all this stuff preserved (plus a cheat sheet of what order to do things in) is essential.

The cloud can only be relied on for one thing: cloudbursts.

[Guest]

Everything is now back to where it was BIF (Before Installing Frame11). Thankfully. The Frame 11 uninstall also required a sledgehammer-style reboot at the end, involving the on/off switch.

I used to use Virtual PC on my Mac ages ago, where I had one VM for each version of Windows that I was testing online help on. Great fun! You could do all sorts of horrible things then just roll back to the previous version of whichever VM you'd totalled.

Self destruct enable? [Yes/No]    I like that!

Thanks again for all your help and advice, which I have taken.

Cheers

Phil

[peter_minneapolis]

philpinder wrote:

Everything is now back to where it was BIF (Before Installing Frame11). Thankfully. The Frame 11 uninstall also required a sledgehammer-style reboot at the end, involving the on/off switch.

I used to use Virtual PC on my Mac ages ago, where I had one VM for each version of Windows that I was testing online help on. Great fun! You could do all sorts of horrible things then just roll back to the previous version of whichever VM you'd totalled.

Self destruct enable? [Yes/No]    I like that!

Thanks again for all your help and advice, which I have taken.

Cheers

Phil

I gave up Virtual PC because back then I had a wimpy Mac, but it did work, just slowly.

Back "then," also, I had a third-party utility from Roxio that sort-of did on those early Windows versions what Restore Point (thanks for the memory jog, Error) came to do - except the Roxio IIRC restored the complete state of the computer, not just the Registry.

Also, thanks to Error for sharing experience with Windows' Restore Point.

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices