Disabling Adobe Products Updater PopUps

[giarc]

Hi all,

Have been searching furiously to try and figure this one out.

I am looking to prevent the update popups for Adobe Reader, Flash and Shockwave for our network users.

As the users do not have the rights to install the updates, it is pointless (and indeed irritating) them getting the update popups.

Ideally, I am looking for a soloution that could be easily rolled out to users without disturbing them.

Reader

I know with Reader you can prevent it from checking for updates by going to Help >> Check for Updates >> Preferences.

Is there a registry tweak that can be applied to do this instead?

Or would deleting/renaming C:\Program Files\Adobe\Reader 8.0\Reader\AdobeUpdateCheck.exe and AdobeUpdater.dll work?

Flash

With Flash, I know you can go here http://www.macromedia.com/support/document..._manager05.html to change the updater preferences, but from my testing this does not seem to work.

Is there a registry tweak that can be applied to do this?

Or would deleting/renaming C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\FlashUtil9e.exe do the trick?

Shockwave

Same thing for Shockwave you can go here http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/welcome/ but again, I have found this not to work.

Is there a registry tweak for this?

Or would deleting/renaming C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Shockwave 10\SwHelper_xxxxxx.exe do the trick?

Thanks in advance,

Craig

[Arie]

For Adobe Reader, simply download Regshot and make a snapshot of your Registry. Change the settings as you please in Adobe Reader and make another snapshot. Compare both snapshots to see which Registry keys are affected by your changes. For the other two, I've never looked into it, so I can't be of much service I'm afraid.

Edited February 26, 2008 by Arie

[giarc]

Cool thanks dude, will check it out

Anyone got any ideas for Shockwave and Flash?

Am going to test renaming the files mentioned in my first post and see what happens.

Thanks

[DigeratiPrime]

I will have to check but I think I was able to disable all of the update checks by opening Adobe Bridge, going to Help>Update, and unchecking all the Adobe Apps. This may be wrong but I will check asap.

[bj-kaiser]

Here is something for Flash.

Found in Adobe's KB:

If you are deploying Flash Player 8 or later, store the mms.cfg file in the following location depending on the operating system:

* Windows XP C:\WINDOWS\System32\Macromed\Flash

...

To disable auto-update notification:

1. Create or open the mms.cfg file in a text editor.

2. Add the following auto-update setting:

AutoUpdateDisable=1

3. Save the mms.cfg file with UTF-8 encoding in the correct system location for the user's operating system.

4. Close and restart Flash Player or the browser in which Flash Player is running for the new setting to take effect.

[giarc]

Found the file that effects the Flash Player settings ...

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player\Macromedia.com\support\flashplayer\sys\settings.sol

Make the changes at the website mentioned in the 1st post website mentioned in the 1st post close down IE, and copy the settings.sol file to somewhere safe, then distribute as needed.

Is a user specific file, so copy to all user's of a machine as required.

[giarc]

Found the Adobe Reader update preferences file.

C:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Application Data\Adobe\Updater5\AdobeUpdaterPrefs.dat

<AutoCheck>1</AutoCheck>
<AutoCheckType>0</AutoCheckType>
<AutoCheckFreq>1</AutoCheckFreq>
<InBackGround>0</InBackground>

To disable the Auto updates change the value of <AutoCheck> to 0.

As a one off it is not worth doing this, only if you need to apply the settings to more than one user, as you need to actually go to thepreferences page and manually uncheck the "Check for updates" box to add the required lines into the file.

I guess you could experiment more to see which lines are added, but this is fine for my needs.

Edited February 29, 2008 by giarc

[Talderon]

Also check your Task Scheduler, I found it there in Vista.