Adobe Reader

Owned by Jeffrey Shapiro
Last updated: Mar 10, 2021
4 min read

License: A distribution license is required for organizations to distribute Adobe Reader, you can apply here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/us/en/acrobat/pdf-reader/volume-distribution.html

Update cycle: Quarterly features/bug fix + Emergency Security Patching as needed (these tend to be much more frequent).

Requirements: Adobe Acrobat Customization Wizard download here: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/Wizard/index.html

Note: The Adobe Acrobat Customization Wizard is required, using a traditional MSI editor like Orca is unsupported by Adobe

Patch Repository: ftp://ftp.adobe.com/pub or https://get.adobe.com/reader/enterprise/

Edit: Added Method #2 due to Method #1 not working properly.

Package Creation (Method 1)

All the .EXE files from the above directory can be extracted. I use 7-Zip to do this.

Create an administrative install directory with 2 sub-directories, one for the Administrative install and one for housing the installer files. For my demonstration, I will call the Administrative installation point AIP and the installer directory Installer. For this example, I will place both in the root of the C drive in a folder called C:\AdobeReader.

  1. Open a command prompt window, run as an administrator
  2. We will preform an administrative installation of the Adobe Reader program as a quiet install with a progress bar: msiexe.exe /a C:\AdobeReader\Install\acroread.msi /qb TARGETDIR=C:\AdobeReader\AIP
  3. We will copy setup.ini into the AIP directory: copy c:\AdobeReader\Install\setup.ini c:\AdobeReader\AIP
  4. We will patch our administrative install with the current patch as a quiet install and a progress bar: msiexec.exe /a C:\AdobeReader\AIP\acroread.msi /qb /p c:\AdobeReader\Install\AcroRdr<patchnumber>.msp 

We will open up Adobe Acrobat Customization Wizard to configure a transform file. Open the MSI file in your AIP directory. 

  • Recommend to run the installation Silently (no interface)
  • Recommend checking Supress display for EULA
  • Recommend to suppress reboot
  • Recommend checking remove all versions of Adobe Reader as we are replacing them with this install - this has been hit or miss though
  • Recommend Making Adobe Reader default - no longer supported on Windows 10, admins will need to find another way to make this default
  • Consider patching manually and disabling auto-updates or not
  • You may need to make registry changes, file changes or installer changes as needed. You will need to understand the changes you are making and it will need to depend on what you are doing.
  • Note if you save, your transform will be named to AcroRead.mst and placed in the installer's directory. If you generate a transform, you can save it with any name/location you would like. Unlike Orca, this doesn't save the transform file locally.

When we have a working installer, we can place this in our Digital Software Library and create an SCCM application to push this out.

SCCM Application:

Add from the DSL as an MSI application, be sure that all folders and transforms are present. This is assuming you saved your Transform as an MSI

Install string: msiexec.exe /i "AcroRead.msi" /qn TRANSFORMS="AcroRead.mst"

Uninstall String: msiexec.exe /x <Product Code> - SCCM will put this in by default provided you add this as a traditional MSI installer.

Detection Method: As you are installing an MSI file, the product code will show up by default. Recommend changing this by MSI property to equal the current version of the product. This will prevent confusion on detecting older versions of the product and confusing them with the current product. This is mandatory if you are controlling updates. You can forgo this if you are not managing updates.

Supersedence: Add all previous versions of Adobe Reader as superseded applications, set them to be uninstalled and replaced w/ current version if you are managing updates, otherwise you can forgo this.

You will see better behavior if you download the content locally to cache before installing as the files can be large for mass deployments.


Deployment considerations: I recommend giving every computer a 1 week grace period to install Adobe within a maintenance window before aggressively pushing it out to all machines outside of a maintenance window when possible. The reason for this is that Adobe may require a reboot to install/uninstall. While this will be suppressed, there is always a small chance Adobe will not be able to install until a machine is rebooted.


Package Creation (Method 2):

This method creates a package utilizing Setup.Ini changes. I switched to Method 2 after I was unable to apply the latest MSP files via the msiexec.exe administrative install. I'm not entirely sure why this was an issue.

  1. Extract the Adobe executable (.exe) installer into a separate folder. This will be the root directory of your install package. I use 7-Zip to extract but any program should work.
  2. Verify setup.ini file has the patch details for the latest Adobe patch (.MSP). See below for the vanilla Setup.Ini
  3. Open AcroRead.MSI using the Adobe Customization Wizard and make the desired changes. See above for my preferred changes as they haven't changed.
  4. When saving the changes in the Adobe Customization Wizard, it will default to creating an MST file in the root directory (AcroRead.MST).
  5. Verify the MST file was added to setup.ini with the following line: CmdLine=TRANSFORMS="AcroRead.mst" See below for the Final Setup.Ini

See below for what a vanilla Setup.Ini will look like and what it should look like when complete. 

Vanilla

[Startup]
RequireMSI=3.0

[Product]
PATCH=AcroRdrDCUpd2100120140.msp
msi=AcroRead.msi


Finished

[Startup]
RequireMSI=3.0
CmdLine=/sall /rs

[Product]
PATCH=AcroRdrDCUpd2100120140.msp
msi=AcroRead.msi
CmdLine=TRANSFORMS="AcroRead.mst"


When creating an SCCM Application, I choose a Script installer


For installation, the command string you require is setup.exe (the setup.ini file will take care of the rest).

For uninstlalation, I use msiexec.exe /x to remove the desired product code. You can get the product code from the MSI file AcroRead.msi.

Detection Method: I add a clause to check for Windows Installer and use AcroRead.MSI as the reference installer. 

User experience: Install for System and weather or not a user is logged in are required. 

Maximum runtime, I set to 30 minutes. You can change as desired.Â