Vista & Acrobat 6 on Acer Extensa

Not sure if this is a Vista problem, an Acrobat 6 problem, or an Acer problem. I have an eMachine desktop with Vista Home Premium, and an Acer Extensa laptop, also with Vista Home Premium. I've configured each machine the same way, with primarily the same software.

Both are loaded with Acrobat 6. Both machines are unable to run the Distiller to print to a PDF file, which is an incompatibility with Vista that I can live with. My problem is that on the eMachine, I can open PDF files from IE 7, but cannot on the laptop. On the laptop I consistently get the message "Cannot locate Adobe", even though it's loaded on the laptop.

I checked that the Adobe PDF ActiveX control is properly enabled on both machines. I also made sure the Acrobat preferences are configured the same way on both machines. However, when I change the Internet setting in Acrobat to open PDF files either in the web browser or from Adobe, on the laptop I get a message about not being able to locate a file related to Netscape, even though Netscape isn't loaded on the desktop or the laptop. This does not happen on the desktop. Some type of installation begins to take place, but I cannot figure out what it's trying to do or if it's successful.

The only other thing that is different between the two configurations is the work around I'm using to get around the Distiller incompatibility. On the desktop, I have a Canon multifunction printer that has a PDF option, so in addition to printing directly to the printer or to a fax, I can print to a PDF file. My laptop is setup to print to the same printer as a network printer, but for some reason the PDF option does not work. As a way to print to PDF files, I loaded Win2PDF. Could this be part of the problem? Otherwise, I have no way to print to PDF files on the laptop.

Has anyone had a similar problem, or figured out what could be happening? With everything else being equal, other than what I noted above, I cannot figure out what's different between the two configurations, nor can I figure out where to look or what to look for to see where there may be differences.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

If you have to use Acrobat you should at least be using the latest which is up to version 9,

Adobe - Adobe Reader Download - All versions

if for no other reason than this,

http://www.vistax64.com/system-security/192250-attackers-gun-adobe-flaw.html

Another option is to use Foxit instead,

Foxit Software

free like Reader, but far far lighter on the system (probably find more feature rich than Acrobat as well).

Thanks for your response. I am using Acrobat, not just the Reader, and I don't want to spend the dollars to upgrade to Acrobat 8 or 9 if I already have what had been a usable version of Acrobat 6. This is especially since it works on one machine and not the other. However, I will review the other items you mentioned and see if there are other options available.