Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0.1 & Adobe Speed Launcher – it’s back, but they did not want you to know

System Requirements:

• Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.1.0

The Problem:

Second Adobe gripe in not too sizable space of time, here is the first.

Adobe Acrobat Reader (It’s Acrobat, it was Acrobat when they released it, it’s Acrobat now, sue me) has developed a superiority complex over the years. For some reason it thinks that it needs to sitting in RAM at boot time on everyone’s system, just so it can dump its IE ActiveX control into the browser AX cache the little bit faster. Newsflash – Every sys-ad under the sun deletes the darn thing.

It looked for a glimmering, magical moment when Adobe released Acrobat Reader 8.1.0 that they had finally woken up… alas they moved it out of the Start-up folder on the Start Menu and dropped it into the registry hoping that no one was going to notice.

The Fix:

Let us be honest here, you don’t really need me to tell you where to go. You already know, you just don’t want to believe it.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

Yeah…

So pull out Group Policy and get deleting post-install. There are so many fun, time wasting ways that you can remove this (again and for the 11th time in a reader release).

If you are really stuck, here is a .reg sample that will do it: