Solved Multiple Adobe software issues: Help Please...

Hi there. This past fall I took some online graphics courses through my local community college. As part of the course I was instructed to download Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Flash's 30 day trial versions. I did as instructed and everything went smoothly, until I went to uninstall. They refuse to be uninstalled. The mostl likely cause is that Adobe is so afraid that people are going to repeatedly install/uninstall the freeby version that they have gone to extreme measures to keep hackers from stealing their products. However, refusing to let the software be uninstalled has GOT to be against my civil liberties.

Aaaanyway, I have found a few threads on other forums relating to this issue and have tried the suggested thoughts on how to resolve this issue. Apparently this has been going on since at least CS2 and my install was CS5. However, none of the suggestions have worked. (And I'm not yet ready to wipe my hard drive clean as someone else had to do!)

It seems that the Adobe software(s) have hijacked my "Take Ownership" capabilities. I am unable to Take Ownership or change Permissions for these files/folders. I have done everything suggested from running CCleaner to manually trying to go into the Properties/Security options of each program and changing the Ownership back to the Administrator to no avail. As soon as I click ok, go out and back to Properties it has already defaulted back to "Trustedhandler." I also tried to manually change the entire Registry Key files to Administrator Ownership/Permissions, but that didn't work either.

I downloaded an automated "Take Ownership" program from AskVG.com (though I am ALWAYS leary of downloading more software from unknown sources. Who knows what's secretely being attached?!) After the install you are supposed to be able to go to Explorer, find the program you want to reclaim ownership of, right click, select "Take Ownership" from the drop-down menu and it is supposed to automatically take care of overridding the current options to Administrator. I can see it open a command box and it appears to run through the files, but when I go to uninstall it flat-out does nothing.

Yet, when I go to Add/Remove Programs and select a program to uninstall it says I have to wait until the current program finishes uninstalling ~ but the weird thing is, NOTHING is uninstalling. When I open Task Manager the only thing open is the Programs and Features with no programs running an uninstall. I am at a loss. These programs are taking up 6 mb of space and I can't even use them!

Come on Microsoft you're smarter than Adobe ~ HELP! or FIX IT so they can't hijack my computer!

Any ideas ya'll? And Thanx in advance.

P.S. I also went to dos thinking I could possibly do an uninstall there, but these programs don't even show up in my WMIC files. I haven't done much in DOS since Windows came into the world. So not too comfortable playing around behind the scenes. Know what I mean jellybean? Sorry for the book!!!!

That was quick! Thanx Yard Dog. I'll be happy to try. Will post outcome.

Robin

Mmmmmm.........I'm a little dubious about this program. It says "ADOBE" is the publisher.

Hey Yard Dog. Good morning. I took another look at the Revo Uninstaller program this morning. I was SO incredibly tired of messing with my computer by the time I got your post that I wasn't thinking straight. As it turns out, I think, the "Adob Publisher" notice was because the website itself wanted to install "Adobe Flash Player" , and I thought it was the Revo program starting to install. I downloaded the program and am reading the instructions now. It 'sounds' promising. Thanx again for taking the time to help. R~

Morning, let us know how it works out

YD ~ YOU are "THE MAN!" All freakin' Adobe Trial Software has been 100% REMOVED! (And I didn't have to wipe my hard drive clean to do it. Thank gawd :-) Wish I had found this forum a week ago. It did take me about 4 hours to do it, but I've spent untold hours over the past week researching "how-to" do it!

Thanks man. (Here's a virtual six-pack for you :-)))) R~

Thanks, i was outa beer here . Glad that worked for you.