Acrobat 7.nn Pro & Reader both crash on opening/OK in "safeboot"

[dakotaboy@adobeforums.com]

We use Acrobat Pro 6 & Reader 6 on our machines without incident. Have had v. 7 since last spring, but have NEVER been able to install/run it successfully, so just lived with 6. Last few days, I decided we were tired of speed with 6 (slow), and decided to get to bottom of 7 problem, so spent a few hours. Hah!

Programs install fine. On opening, they draw menu bars, then pause, then crash. Opening with "shift" depressed does not help. Fonts are OK on these machines, and work fine with 6.

The installation of Pro would never even progress to the "auto update" stage, to get later versions.

SO, I installed in "Root," all went normally, Pro did its auto-updating to v. 7.0.8, and program ran fine in all modes tested. Then safebooted and, again, program ran fine. Booting as owner-user (these are Admin. accounts) will crash. We have temporarily removed all third-party stuff and all "launch at startup" items that we can on the test machine. Same result, crash.

These are G4 Quicksilvers (original 2001), 867 mhz, one with 1.25 gb and other with 1.5 gb RAM, OSX 10.4.7, various hard drives. BTW, a clone of one of them to a G4 12" Powerbook (2005 Al.) 1.5 ghz yields the same result.....OK in safeboot, crash normally.

Tearing hair out....any help much appreciated.

[MikeKazlow@adobeforums.com]

I'd try to fix permissions. Remove all traces of Acrobat including
preference files, re-install, and fix permissions. If that doesn't do
it, I'd recommend an Archive and Install or better yet a clean install
if you have the time.

Mike

[dakotaboy@adobeforums.com]

Mike

Many thanks for the reply. We have tried all the first batch (permissions, volume verify, all CRON's up to date, all old Adobe files, not to mention just Acrobat, removed before reinstalls, etc.) without results. These appls. have NEVER run on our setups.

I'm thinking you are on the money about an archive & install. A clean install isn't in the cards right now just to fix Acrobat; we can live with 6 if we must, and we aren't experiencing any other problems. (Well, actually, maybe clean installs with migration wouldn't be so bad. We'll see.)

Thanks again; any other ideas fire away. --Bill--

[Ben_McMahon@adobeforums.com]

If it works in Safe Boot, it is most likely either a bad non-system font, or a conflicting background process running in normal mode that doesnt run in Safe Boot.
Have you tried creating a new user (not Root) and seeing if it will run under that? If you can use it under a different user, then in the original user look at the Login Items in Accounts. One of these is mot likely the background process causing problems.