Acrobat 8 Disappears

[Jim_Slim@adobeforums.com]

I have been using Acrobat 8 essentially since it came out.

Today, I pulled up a pdf application that I need to fill out. It showed up as an interactive form, but when I tried to type the information in, nothing happened. The blinking cursor remained stationary within the information field.

So I decided to close it out of Safari and to open it directly in Acrobat 8.

I closed it out, then went to my dock to click onto the Acrobat 8 icon. It was no longer there. So I went to my Acrobat 8 (professional) folder in applications. Distiller 8 was in there, but Acrobat 8 was gone.

So I did a search for "acrobat." The application Acrobat 8 had simply disappeared altogether.

I opened up my old copy of Acrobat 7, but it does not recognize the information fields within the pdf.

Naturally, there is a deadline on this application and that deadline is today. I will still get it filled out, but with much greater hassle now.

What gives? Why would this happen? I use 8 frequently and now it is just gone.

[Mike Kazlow@adobeforums.com]

Somehow it was deleted. You will need to restore from the original disks.

Mike

[Jim_Slim@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, Mike. I can assure you, however, that while it is obviously deleted, it was not deleted. In other words, no action, intentionally or otherwise, was ever taken by me that would have deleted it, and I am the only one who ever uses this computer. Until I went looking today, I had not been anywhere within any of the folders inside my application folder for weeks, maybe months, but had often used 8 within that time.

[Mike Kazlow@adobeforums.com]

Well, the only thing I can think of is that your hard drive's directory
may be corrupt. Do you have Disk Warrior? That is the best tool I know
of for fixing or detecting directory damage. If you cannot or will not
consider Disk Warrior you can try booting in single user mode and
running fsck (or running Disk Utility from your OS DVD).

Mike

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

You should probably start by doing a Repair from the Add/Remove
Programs Control panel.

When files disappear be worried by three possibilities:
1. Someone removed it (anyone have access)
2. Something removed it. A virus perhaps. Is all your protection up to
date?
3. Something broke. Maybe the disk is starting to fail.

Aandi Inston

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

Uhh! Aandi - your PC bias is showing. ;-) There is no such thingin the Mac OS That strictly a PC thing.

And as for mike comment. there is a nice little Utility that works in single User mode that bundles all the safe UNIX utilities Together for up to OSX.4.11 Its called AppleJack.

install in from a pkg file while you in regular mode. Them once insatlled switch to single use r (Restart then command-S)

Then when screen comes up type in applejack when it is load you will see a menu of choices. follow them in sequence. Besides the normal repairs it fixes permission, dumps all cache files on system, and in system, verifies and removes defective preference files for System and Users, and dumps Virtual memeory files the hard drive uses to read and write from when you have to swap files to Drive from memory.

when you do a restart everything has to rebuild the first time, but then afterwards everything zips along fast and it clears out many many troubles.

Caution: the version for OSX.4.11 works with all previous version of OSX. But OSX.5 is so vastly different, they've had to do a Total rewrite So unless its been updated to run on OSX.5 don't download it.

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

I'm forced to agree, a close reading does strongly suggest a Mac,
though of course Safari is available on Windows too. Indeed, my advice
was for Windows.

Aandi Inston

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

I find I'm having to edit most of my comments because of such poor spelling, my apologies. ;-(

Here it is again hopefully corrected:
-----

And as for Mike's comments. There is a nice little utility that works in single User mode that bundles all the safe UNIX utilities together for up to OSX.4.11 Its called AppleJack.

Install from a pkg file downloaded from website (type AppleJack in Google), while you in normal start up mode (not Single User). Then once installed switch to single user (Restart then command-S)

When screen comes up and there is a blinking cursor, type in applejack. When it is loaded you will see a menu of choices, follow them in sequence.

Besides the normal repairs

It fixes permissions

Dumps all cache files on system, and in User directory.

Verifies and removes defective preference files for System and Users.

Dumps Virtual memory files the hard drive uses to read and write from when you have to swap files to Drive from memory.

And other tasks.

When you do a restart everything has to rebuild the first time, so it will be very slow starting up and in fact you may see the dreaded blue screen for a minute or so, because its rebuilding Virtual Memory files, Caches ad other items. But then afterwards everything zips along fast and it clears out many many troubles.

Caution: the version for OSX.4.11 works with all previous version of OSX. But OSX.5 is so vastly different, they've had to do a Total rewrite. So unless its been updated to run on OSX.5 don't download it.

[Aandi_Inston@adobeforums.com]

>I'm forced to agree, a close reading does strongly suggest a Mac

D'Oh! The forum, of course, is a dead give away!

Aandi Inston

[Jim_Slim@adobeforums.com]

Thanks all - Anyway, I do have 8 back up and running. I remain perplexed as to why it disappeared in the first place. I hope my disk is not failing!

Yes, I am on a Mac, 2 x 2.66 GHz with Dual Cre Intel, 1.5 years old, still running 10.4.11.

[pjonesCET@adobeforums.com]

AppleJack then would be a Good utility to install then.

[daq@adobeforums.com]

As a systems admin, i usually blame issues like this on the user. Until it happened to me. ;-) The only thing left in the Acrobat folder is Uninstall Acrobat app. I ran AppleJack with no success.

I don't really like MacOS, but since its basically Unix which I've been using for years and know for a fact it doesn't randomly delete files, I blame this issue on Adobe.

I can reinstall Acrobat, but since I don't use it that much, I'd rather take my time to find out what happened.

Any suggestions?

[Michael Kazlow]

Disk Directory corruption can happen with any OS on nearly any hardware.
Sometimes its a software problem, sometimes a hardware problem. Again,
I'd recommend running Disk Warrior.

Mike

[daq@adobeforums.com]

I tested the drive in a PC. No physical problems. Thanks for suggestion though.

[Michael Kazlow]

How are you able to test an HFS+ drive on a PC?

Mike

[daq@adobeforums.com]

Well, as I said I tested the drive for physical damage in the pc which works regardless of the file system. I tested the hfs specifically with AppleJack before that.

[Michael Kazlow]

I use Applejack, but it and the Disk Utility doesn't do the job that
DiskWarrior does. I've seen Disk Warrior fix problems that fsck (used by
Disk Utility and Applejack) doesn't detect nor fix.

Mike

[daq@adobeforums.com]

I just can't justify spending $100 on DW when I can reinstall the app. I guess this is the end of my quest to find out why Adobe apps self uninstall. :-)

[Michael Kazlow]

Daq,

Acrobat doesn't uninstall itself. If it did, after almost two years, we
would hear about it from many users. Something else is going on. I don't
believe that if something is causing it to disappear, that re-installing
will cure the problem---especially if it is due to some directory
damage. If that is due to directory damage, I'd recommend a disk wipe
and a clean install of the OS. After all it was Acrobat that disappeared
now, what happens if data starts to disappear?

Mike

[daq@adobeforums.com]

Time Machine to the rescue. :-)

You're right, of course, but old Acrobat folder is too clean to be an error of the file system. Just like during an uninstall, only one file, the uninstaller, remains in the folder. From my experience, this was a scripted removal.

fsck may not be able to fix all the problems, but it would surely detect something so obvious that it causes file disappearance.