🚀 go-pugleaf

The Adobe Reader 8 tries to uninstall Reader 7.
For some reasons it can't. So I did everything possible to achieve this ; it took me a while, but I could do it!

Let me provide some tips, provided that
- you tried the uninstall (from distrib)
- you tried some free tools like the excellent EasyCleaner by ToniArts
- you are not afraid to titillate the Registry!

This is the things I did to give you an idea...

1. Download the free trial of InstallShield ; decompress the Adobe Reader 8 to get the MSI file, and open it in InstallShield. At this stage, you understand easily why the install/uninstall is problematic. InstallShield (12) is a bugs nest. It seems to be badly programmed, and - due to its structure - brings about many dependencies and tricky links in the registry. Could have probably made Reader 8 to install here, by changing a RemovePrevious from Y to N - but I wanted to understand which part of the Registry was causing problem.

2. Get RegMon from sysinternals (registry monitor) and start it during the install of Adobe 8. Check the Keys the installer is looking for (found) and check them in regedit.

3. In Regedit, find the Keys (e.g. AC76BA86...), keep track of their ancestors (eg package ID) ; remove keys and ancestors carefully

4. Run EasyClean by ToniArts to finish the job.

Install Reader 8 was then ok.

Moral: Adobe shouldn't use InstallShield which put a total mess in the registry. Or at least they should provide tools to clean it (e.g. find installed keys in the registry to delete them). The uninstall of reader 7 took me a lot of time.

No doubt other people may be tempted to use alternative solutions, there are now other PDF readers...