"The Acrobat PDFMaker Server could not be loaded" - a possible solution?

[Russyan]

I’m using Windows 2007 with all latest windows updates and patches. It is having MS Office 2000 and Adobe Acrobat 7 installed. Since past couple of days whenever I I click on ‘Convert to Adobe PDF’ I get the following error message: “The Acrobat PDFMaker Server could not be loaded. Do you want to run the installer in repair mode?” This error occurs with both MS Word and Excel.

Repairing Office dint helped in anyway. I tried searching help online, found some solutions which worked for others but none of them helped me. Can someone here help me out with this?

[Twoschmoov]

The config for this case is;
O/S - XP SP3
Apps - Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Standard, Adobe PageMaker 7.0, MS Office 2003

There was a conflict with an older version of Adobe PDFMaker that required an installation of Adobe Distiller 6.0 when Adobe Distiller 8.0 was already installed from a previous installation of Adobe Acrobat Standard. So I removed from the registry any reference to acrodist.exe to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\. Then verified or added in the Registry;
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\App Paths
\AcroDist.exe, C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\acrodist.exe, and added a new String Value called Path, which I set to:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 8.0\Acrobat\

Then I deleted C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Acrobat folders.

I did follow direction from various forum posting even re-registering certian .dll files, but this worked for this situation.

During the installation of Adobe PageMaker 7.0, it says Adobe Distiller is required for installation. Obviously thats not true. Not very backwards tech-friendly if the software cant detect a newer version of itself and not corrupt the newer software - Thanks Adobe for the hours lost figuring this out!

After following your regedit instructions, I can now successfully use PDFmaker functions from within my Office 2003 apps! WinXP Service Pack 3, Acrobat 7.1 Pro, and new work PC where all this software was just loaded....

[Ranfar]

Hello,
I have Office 2007, running on Windows XP SP3 and have the same issue when trying to save as PDF from a Word document. There are links on the document that I want active on the PDF form, or I would just print to PDF instead. Print to PDF works fine, but Save as... gives me "The Acrobat PDFMaker Server could not be loaded, do you want to run the installer in repair mode?"

I looked at your fix to change something in the registry, but do not understand how to when the AcroDist.exe is not there.

I apologize as I am not sure what steps you took to accomplish:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\App Paths
\AcroDist.exe

, and failing - it didn't exist in the registry.

(What do I select to change the default?) So, I created the key, changed the (Default) entry to:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Distillr\acrodist.exe

(Where do I add the string?) , and added a new String Value called Path, which I set to:

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Distillr\

I'd hate to have to reinstall, but if this works I could use it.
Thanks!

[Rune-]

It apparently also works when using Adobe Acrobat Standard 9. I installed a trial version of 8 Pro because I needed to use Batch Processing. After uninstall, nothing worked :)

The approach above worked. However no registry by the name AcroDist.exe was to be found, so had to create that and the below references to the Default-key and the Path.

My acrodist.exe was placed in the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Acrobat\

And by the way thank you to Adobe for making standard and pro very compatible!