Alternative to Acrobat Reader (Win XP)
 

Is there a better alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader for Windows XP? I'm looking for one because (a) the Acrobat Reader v6 on my Win XP desktop has stopped loading (I tried removing it and re-installing to no avail); and (b) the darn program when it works takes forever to load. Thanks!

I seem to remember that you can still find acrobat reader 5.x somewhere. Here's one:

http://www.pdfstore.com/details.asp?ProdID=614

6.x is pretty bloated and slow to load. Try 5.x.

-David

Thanks for your suggestion, LIH Prem, but it didn't work.

Here's what I did:
1. Removed Acrobat Reader 6 thru Add/Remove Program control panel
2. Restarted my computer.
3. Ran Ad-Aware (in case some spyware is present in my computer).
4. Downloaded Acrobat Reader 5
5. Installed Acrobat Reader 5
--> Program is ostensibly being installed... but after installation, there is no Acrobat Reader 5 application anywhere!
6. Restarted
7. Downloaded and re-installed Acrobat Reader 6
8. After installation, tried to start Acrobat Reader 6
--> The splash screen for Acrobat Reader 6 with all the U.S. patents listed appears... but the program does not load... just that splash screen.
--> When I Ctrl-Alt-Del, it's not there in the Application tab but is there in the Processes tab as "AcroRd32.exe" but no application window appears. Grr! :mad:

Anybody have any other suggestion? Thanks!

You might want to consider XPDF, an open source PDF reader:

ftp://ftp.foolabs.com/pub/xpdf/xpdf-3.00-win32.zip

And if you're worried about getting it from an unofficial source, you can actually download any earlier version from Adobe.

I got rid of 6 and reinstalled 5 and am MUCH happier with the performance.

Continuing on my Acrobat saga:

9. Next, I removed Acrobat Reader 6
10. Restarted
11. Re-installed Acrobat Reader 5
12. When I open a PDF document, Acrobat Reader 5 loads initially but gets stuck at "initializing WebPDF.api" and this error message eventually appears: "There was an error while loading the plug-in in 'WebPDF.api'. The plug-in failed to initialize." I "OK" the error message and it continues to load and eventually comes back with another error message: "There was an error opening this document. A temporary file could not be opened."

And so it goes...
:mad:

I don't know if this is part of your problem or not, but I do quite a few installs of computer systems, and I do install Acrobat (currently 6.x) as part of the setup. Many times the first time it loads there is a box telling you than an update is available, do you want to download it? For some reason that box seems to stay hidden, behind the main Acrobat window. I also thought the program had stopped loading until I discovered this "feature". So now I minimize the main window after loading, just to ensure it's not lurking on me.

Good luck,
Bruce

Good suggestions in this thread.

Also, if you know what you are doing, remove any versions of acrobat reader installed on your system, then use regedit and go through the entire registry and delete any keys associated with acrobat reader (any version). If you aren't an advanced user, this isn't for you. You can render your system unusable if you don't know what you are doing with regedit and aren't very careful.

Then try the entire cycle again.

Or, as suggested above, try xpdf.

-David

I also use PDF995 as a compliment to Adobe Acrobat, especially for creating PDF files. www.pdf995.com

If all you want to do is put together PDF files without all the associated bells and whistles, it's a good way to go. The files are also usually smaller in size.