How To Uninstall Adobe Products

The popularity of ActiveX controls has given rise to websites that incorporate Adobe products such as Adobe Flash and Shockwave players and Adobe Acrobat Reader within Internet Explorer as plugins to add the required functionality. At times, you need to uninstall these plugins to fix certain problems. Two of the most common reasons to uninstall Adobe plugins are given below:

  1. You receive frequent errors while working with applications using these plugins. In this case, either the plugin installed on your system is corrupt or outdated.
  2. You are unable to upgrade to the new version without uninstalling the currently installed version.

How to Uninstall Acrobat Reader 5.0

If you are unable to upgrade your current Acrobat Reader 5.0 to a later version, then perform the following steps to remove it from your system:

  1. Close all Acrobat Reader documents and exit the application.
  2. If there are any documents in the Adobe folder, you want to keep, move them to another location.
  3. Open Control Panel and select the Add or Remove Programs option.
  4. Scroll through the displayed window and select the Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 option.
  5. Next, select the Remove button to start the uninstallation process.
  6. Restart your PC to ensure that all related files are removed from the system.

Although this process uninstalls Acrobat Reader, it does not remove many related shared files from the system. For instance, this process does not remove the My Ebooks folder created by Acrobat Reader setup and color management files–*.icc and *.csf. You may need to delete them manually after the uninstallation.

If the normal uninstall is not successful, perform the following steps to manually remove Acrobat Reader 5.0:

  1. Close all Acrobat Reader documents and exit the application.
  2. If there are any documents in the Adobe folder, you want to keep, move them to another location.
  3. Restart the computer to ensure that the system is not using any Acrobat Reader files.
  4. Open Command Prompt, and use the cd command to change to the ActiveX folder in the Adobe folder. (cd C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Reader\ActiveX)
  5. Next, use the regsvr32 /u command to unregister the following files:
    1. AcroIEHelper.ocx
    2. uPDF.ocx
  6. Exit Command Prompt and restart the computer.
  7. Next, delete the following folders:
    1. Acrobat 5.0 and TypeSpt folders located within Program Files/Common Files/Adobe.
    2. Whapi folder located in the C:\Documents and Settings\CurrentProfileName\Application Data\Adobe\Acrobat folder.
  8. Next, navigate to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\PLUGINS folder and delete NPDocBox.dll and the nppdf32.dll files.
  9. Finally, delete all Acrobat 5.0 shortcuts to complete the uninstallation.

How to Uninstall Adobe Flash Player

To uninstall Flash Player, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the Adobe website.
  2. Download the uninstall_flash_player.exe file according to your operating system.
  3. Save the file in a location, where you can easily locate it when required.
  4. Close all applications that might be using the Flash player-such as Internet Explorer and MSN, Yahoo and AOL messengers.
  5. Finally, double-click on the uninstall_flash_player.exe file to uninstall the Flash player.

Note: Before running the uninstaller, ensure that all applications using the player are closed, otherwise, the uninstallation process will fail to remove the files currently in use.

How to Uninstall Shockwave Player

  1. Visit the Adobe Shockwave website.
  2. Select the Download Now button on the Webpage that opens and save the sw_uninstaller.exe file to your Desktop.
  3. Double-click the file and follow the screen instructions to uninstall Shockwave player from the computer.

If you are unable to update your system to new versions of Adobe products, then it is recommended that you uninstall the existing versions before installing the latest updates. You can uninstall Adobe Flash and Shockwave players by downloading and executing the uninstall tools available on the Adobe website. You can uninstall Acrobat 5.0 either by using the Control Panel or by manually deleting and unregistering its files. After the uninstalling of any of these programs, you may use a registry cleaner software to scan the registry and remove any left over entries. These unwanted entries if left behind can clutter the registry. This, in turn, makes the registry unstable and increases the data access time thereby deteriorating the performance of your computer.