Installing Acrobat Reader 8 on Windows Vista

Vista, you continue to disappoint like the bastard stepchild of XP you are. Perhaps this is Adobe’s fault, perhaps Vista… either way I came across another issue today using Windows Vista. When I downloaded the Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 for Vista file and ran the .exe, it extracted to a temporary directory and after that, I get this error message:

“The Temp folder is on a drive that is full or inaccessible. Free up space on the drive or verify that you have write permission the the Temp folder.”

Umm, what? I double checked everything I could. I have full permissions on the entire drive and the Temp folder. Cleared out the Temp folder to make it empty, etc, etc, etc. Here is the only workaround I could figure out. When the error message comes up Navigate to the \Users folder on the drive that Vista is installed on. Then \Username\AppData\LocalLow\Netopsystems\temp. (Note: If you can’t see the AppData folder, click Organize on the toolbar, then Folder and Search Options, click the view tab then choose the option that says ‘Show hidden files and folders’, or type it into the address bar directly) Copy the Acrobat Reader 8.0 folder to your desktop. Now you can click OK to the above dialog which will delete the folder we just copied.

Now on the desktop open the folder we just copied and run Setup. That’s it, should proceed through installation without any errors. You can then delete the copied folder on your desktop when installation is complete. Hopefully this will help some people out who have had the same problem.