grr acrobat
if it ain’t broke, don’t update it..
i think this mantra applies to software updates, unless you are masochistic of course.. a few weeks ago i updated adobe acrobat 6 (the full version, not the reader) because the software kept bugging me to update.. so i eventually succumbed to pressure (rather, annoyance) and updated the software.. updating wasn’t such a big deal but what came later was..
suddenly, every time acrobat started up, that annoying windows installer window would pop and and try tl ‘update’ and ‘install’ acrobat.. what gives? i just press cancel and it doesn’t seem to affect acrobat’s operation much..
until today.. i started word up after many weeks of using it to type notes without any troubles.. and today when i start it up, it shoots an error message saying ‘compile error in hidden module: autoexec’.. so automatically i panic because i think it’s some crap vba virus, what with the hidden module and all that.. and so i google it.. lo and behold, it’s a damn acrobat problem.. micro$oft has written a nice knowledge base article about it..
so i remove the pdfmaker.dot and pdkmaker.xla files (renaming them to *.old) from the office startup directories, and everything works again.. hmm.. well, everything except for the pdf maker buttons that acrobat embedded into word and excel that were totally useless anyway since printing straight to the acrobat pdf printer was much quicker..
stupid software..
as i read somewhere a few days ago.. if every tuesday we tied our shoelaces the normal way and our shoes exploded someone would say something.. but this happens all the time with computers and no one seems to mind..