TN 7760: Program Stamps for Windows Acrobat - ACROBAT, ACROSTD, ACROPRO, ACRO3D

Windows Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Professional both use the exact same executable file, Acrobat.exe, and sometimes KeyAccess cannot determine which type of Acrobat is installed or used. Sassafras Software defines a special product named “Adobe Acrobat Unknown Type Win” in order to help notice this ambiguous case.

2011.10.20 (reviewed)

Some sites may have purchased both Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Professional for Windows. However, both of these products use the identical Acrobat.exe executable file. When Acrobat is run, KeyAccess will try to determine what type of Acrobat is installed so that KeyServer can grant an appropriate license to KeyAccess. If KeyAccess can identify which Acrobat is installed it will use a unique “Identifier” when communicating with KeyServer. This Identifier appears in the Programs window, as well as in the Programs pane of the Product Details windows. The possible Identifiers are:

• ACROBAT - an Unknown type of Acrobat (KeyAccess failed to find any information about what type of Acrobat was installed)
• ACROSTD - Acrobat Standard
• ACROPRO - Acrobat Professional
• ACRO3D - Acrobat 3D

Usually, KeyAccess will succeed in identifying which Acrobat is present, so generally you will only need to be concerned with the stamps ACROSTD and ACROPRO (and to a lesser degree ACRO3D which was only sold for a few versions). However, there are certain well defined conditions under which KeyAccess will be unable to tell which Acrobat is present:

• Acrobat is version 6 or earlier. KeyAccess has no way to tell apart Standard and Professional with these older versions, so it will always use the stamp ACROBAT.
• Acrobat.exe is found on disk, but Acrobat was never actually installed on the computer. KeyAccess cannot distinguish different types of Acrobat based on the executable alone.
• The installed KeyAccess is earlier than version 6.1.0.3. Prior to 6.1.0.3, KeyAccess did not contain any code for distiniguishing different types of Acrobat, so it would always use ACROBAT.
• The installed KeyAccess is earlier than version 6.1.3 and Acrobat is version 8 or higher. Prior to 6.1.3, KeyAccess could distinguish Acrobat version 7 only.
• The installed KeyAccess is a 64 bit KeyAccess and is earlier than version 7.0. Prior to 7.0, the 32 bit version of KeyAccess could distinguish different types of Acrobat, but the 64 bit version of KeyAccess could not.

So, if you know that you have 32 bit KeyAccess earlier than 6.1.3 or 64 bit KeyAccess earlier than 7.0 on some of your clients, you may want to add the appropriate variant with stamp ACROBAT to any product containing ACROSTD or ACROPRO for which you have policies.

There is also a product definition in the Sassafras Software defined products named “Adobe Acrobat Unknown Type Win”. This product helps you check for audits containing a version of ACROBAT which should not normally be used by running the Audit Products (PROD x comp) report on the “Adobe Acrobat Unknown Type Win” product. The product contains precisely those versions of the ACROBAT Identifier which are normally special-cased and avoided. If any computers show up in an Audit Products report for this product it indicates that for some reason KeyAccess could not determine what type of Acrobat was installed. Note that you should not make any Policies for this special product, since it does not correspond to any real product. Instead, if you discover clients using the ACROBAT stamp, you can add ACROBAT variants to existing products which have ACROSTD or ACROPRO variants.

If you encounter a case where KeyAccess uses the ACROBAT Identifier and it is not explained by any of the well known cases above, please contact us and describe your observations.