Adobe Reader Patches

[Marianna]

everypatch I create shows up after doing a sync except Adobe patches since march 2020, I have no clue where to begin. In the console it says the patch is created I get no error messages when creating them but they just don't show up in the console.

I figured it out, since I had handed this task to another user they didn't tell me this was happening since march last year, I guess something changed in the naming convention, I had to go into Configuration manager>administration>site>Software update point>Products and check all the adobe stuff along with some new products. thank you

I swear, as a student i have enough active programs already, i don't need more porgrams to frigging restart my computer everyday just because your stable platform of adobe sucks. The worst part about adobe's updates, are the following:

I noticed the same issues...I could not find how to contact Adobe to ask why so many updates are required. I know that in addition to the frequent updates I experience that any infrequent Firefox update will also require an Adobe update. I also have a ton of licensed software that allow me to manipulate adobe products that rarely require any updates of any kind. Lately it has reached a peak and I wish they would tell me why I need to update. I feel like the minor program I sometimes use has taken the place of the OS and Browser in hijacking the time it needs with manipulating the space put aside for it on my hard drive. Do the adobe folks celebrate every update they put out with a kegger as incentive to put out even more or is the software so flawed the users need to update it weekly in order for it to function? Really getting sick of this...to put this into perspective. I am the kind of guy who can drive down the road from Florida to California with a car full of kids blowing kazoos when they arent complaining about the kid next to them saying or doing something to them every 3 minutes and it doesnt annoy me, I can spend 6 hours in the DMV and be sent home to get more documents 2 times in a row and it does not annoy me, I can sit through titanic with a row full of middle school girls crying in the row in front of me - no problem, I am the kind of guy who has never written a complaint about any piece of software in his entire life because he has never gotten to the point of wasting his time pounding out a description of the issue...Adobe's constant updates are starting to annoy me- and I am that guy! So I am pretty sure it is annoying others.

Same issue but 12 years on from first flag and 2 from yours. It seems totally and utterely ridiculous that almost daily it seems, either Camera Raw, Photoshop or Creative needs an update! Thank God I don't use the whole suite!

I too am having problems with updates, once or twice each week. Definitely more than the three listed by the previous poster. As well I am caught in the spin cycle of web sites telling me to call 1-800 numbers, and then you phone only to be told to visit the web site. Neither the phone menu or the web site have any clear path to a resolution. Customer service with most companies is a misnomer, there is no such thing as service.

Anyway, does anyone have any idea how to stop this? One page on the Adobe site said I can go to "preferences" and stop updates, but I can't even figure out where to find Preferences. I'm not even savy enough to know if I can get by without Adobe, or what to replace it with.

Since there are so many complaints about Adobe patching their bugs accross the internet, and so little improvement over the years. I suggest it is not the developers at Adobe. I suggest it is a core leadership problem that needs to start at the CEO and their board. They need a major shift to being customer focused and focused on the customer experience.

Those 4 are probably the 4 scheduled ones, the ones that are frustrating millions of users are the non scheduled CONSTANT (first thing each morning, needing a reboot!) updates. The security updates, geez! is it that hard to create a product that doesn't need about 48 security updates a year?

I don't know what everyone else experiences but I swear I get an adobe update request every time I use my computer - be it flash or reader or something else. It doesn't always require a reboot - but I've never seen software that is so... for lack of a better term: needy.

"Now just before you get on with the mundane thing is life like work, talking to friends and such, well you know that PDF reader you never use, it wants to update it will takie 15 minutes out your working day and reboot your computer...and will terrorise you with updates for the rest of your life."

Someone just compared Adobe updates to OS and Windows updates in terms of frequency. I notice the benefit of the Windows updates and very rarely do they impact the performance of my system. Windows is the engine of my car, my browser is the radio in that car, and Adobe is a station on the radio of that car. I expect to tune up my engine throughout its life and if I drive it for a long time I would expect to have my radio need to be replaced ... but I am thankful that every freaking station on my radio is not as buggy or demanding about updates as Adobe seems to be. The last update of Adobe removed the ability for me to print directly from Reader, now the only way for me to print a pdf is to view the object in my browser and print it using the browser. If I try to print from Reader it lets me know that it 'failed to print'. So far I have seen Adobe go from slow to sluggish and functionality appears to be removed with every other update and now I have to use microsoft word to edit my pdf's in ways that I used to be allowed to.

I install Adobe Reader via Group Policy and software assignment. I've been applying MSP-based patches to my Adobe Reader installation points and then instructing client computers to reinstall via the "Redeploy..." functionality in Group Policy. I don't particularly like doing things this way, but it's the least labor-intensive method I can see.

This recent Adobe Reader patch (9.1.2) is MSP-based, so I'm able to deploy it in my usual manner. If Adobe decides to start distributing EXE-based patches, then I've got a problem and have to begin writing scripts. (Hopefully they'll stick to a Windows Installer based patching regime from here on out. We'll see...)

If they do go to EXE-based updates, I'll write scripts to deploy them silently via computer startup scripts. (If you've got the money to pony-up for Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager, you can use the built-in System Center Update Publisher to deploy these types of updates.)

Having the client computers download patches themselves via the built-in updater functionality in Adobe Reader is useless to me. I need to be able to centrally control the deployment of updates such that I can test the update prior to deployment. Users don't have "Administrator" rights on their computers and can't install any updates themselves anyway. I disable the updater as a transform to the MSI for Adobe Reader.

I've never used a third-party patch management tool, so I can't comment. Patch management tools that claim to automate the patching process have always given me a bit of pause. Tools that do "snapshotting" aren't actually capturing the logic in an installer, and could do the wrong thing under circumstances different than when the snapshot was taken. Tools that "silently install" patches often require the same amount of work that I'd put into writing a script to install the patch anyway. As such, I'm dubious of the effectiveness and reliablity of "patch management" tools over using software assignment, "Redeploy...", and hand-written scripts to deploy patches.

There are a few ways to do this. You can disable Updater by running it (click Help / Check for Updates) then click the Preferences link. You will then see the Preferences dialog, where you can choose to disable Updater.

Updating Adobe Reader can be a bit of a challenge, especially for smaller environments using only Group Policy Software Installation. For Reader 8, Adobe released updates as a complete download of the installer rather than patches. I recommend updating using the full installer as updates for version 9 are released.

Adobe supply a tool to customise the MSI installation of Acrobat, the Adobe Customization Wizard. What we do is to deploy Acrobat/Reader through Group Policy, having first used this tool to customise the MSI to disable all updating, update prompts, etc.

What about using SMS or the new System Center Configuration Manager? I can't afford to play with SCCM but from what I understand it is much easier to deploy / update software than SMS was. It might be worth looking into anyways.

Ultimately I think the best solution is to toss out the idea of 'patching' update and do a remove/re-install with each new update/version. If you want to take the time to wrap the adobe installer as a MSI installer then you could deploy it using GPSI.

If when you say "manager", you're really after update caching, there's a free, open, passive plug-in to the linux-based firewall IPCop called Update Accelerator. You'll not only get your Adobe updates; you'll also get update caching for Apple, Avast, Linux (.deb and .rpm), Microsoft, Symantec, and Trend Micro if you want them. It also supports the ability to add custom sources.

A branch of my organization has been using it for about a quarter with great results (and, may I add, much needed results, as there isn't a ton of bandwidth available to us in Africa). If you like the plug-in but could care less about IPCop, I would just implement IPCop with Update Accelerator, yet neuter the IPCop configuration to the point where it doesn't do anything except direct updates through Update Accelerator.

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