Note: Aaron has posted that Adobe has released the customisation wizard for Acrobat Reader 9 and has updated his excellent post on deploying Acrobat Reader 9 with this new information.

Instructions

To perform a silent install of Adobe Acrobat Reader 9.0, follow these steps:

1. Download the install file from Adobe here .

2. Run the installer, and wait until the setup dialog appears asking you for a destination folder to install to.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 Silent Install Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 Silent Install

3. Leave that dialog open, and in Windows Explorer navigate to C:Documents and SettingsusernamelLocal SettingsApplication DataAdobeReader 9.0Setup FilesREADER9 .  This contains the extracted setup files you will need for silent installs.

4. Copy the files to another location, and cancel the open dialog box.

Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 Silent Install

5. Now to perform a silent install using whatever deployment tool you wish (eg GPO, SMS, SCCM, SCE) you simply execute the MSI with the usual “quiet” switches, eg…

msiexec /qb /i AcroRead.msi

Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 Silent Install

ADM Template for Acrobat Reader 9

If you’re performing a deployment to a business network you might find this ADM handy.  It lets you control three behaviours of Reader 9 for which I find the default settings annoying:

  • automatic updates
  • EULA on first run
  • browser integration

Download it here: (link removed, see below) (7296 downloads)

Note: Aaron has created a much more comprehensive ADM that you can download over at his site.

About the Author

Paul Cunningham

Paul is a former Microsoft MVP for Office Apps and Services. He works as a consultant, writer, and trainer specializing in Office 365 and Exchange Server. Paul no longer writes for Practical365.com.

Comments

  1. Homepage

    Yay yahoo is my queen helped me to obtain this great internet
    site!

  2. kimi

    Thank you very much. i have downloaded that software. even i was feeling so problems with my antivirus to install the acrobat reader…

  3. Joseph Mgassa

    your very generous to enable us to get adobe reader 9.90

  4. kalyani

    Thank you.It worked perfectly fine..
    Will you please tell another softwares that support silent installation??and one more thing what exactly that .msi file contains?plz reply..

  5. David

    Useful instructions. Thank you.

    One small change: when installing version 9.1, I found the installation files in
    C:Documents and SettingsusernameAppDataAdobeReader 9.1Setup Files

    David

  6. Avatar photo
    Paul

    Hi Scott, I haven’t specifically tested this with version 9 but in my experience Acrobat Reader installers will upgrade from the previous version of the program if its already installed. Older ones however usually need manual removal.

    You could build this into your install script by detecting earlier versions and executing their various uninstall command strings before installing v9. Some example uninstall strings are found here: http://www.appdeploy.com

    1. Laurie

      Has anyone used a commnad that will uninstall older versions of Adobe reader and install the version 9? There is a script that will do this for an uninstall of reader 9 and an install of reader x – I have tried working the command to uninstall older than 9 and reinstall 9 – no luck

  7. Scott

    Anyone know how to auto remove all versions of Adobe reader, or is there a switch when installing the msi file with mst file, to auto grade what version they have on there system?

    Scott

  8. Diego

    I add this line to my login script so it install the app when users login. But how can I configure so it won’t install on computers that alreday have it?
    thanks!

    msiexec /qb /i AcroRead.msi

  9. Jason

    do you know if you can use the msiexec /qb /i AcroRead.msi in a cmdline Task sequence in SCCM 2007, i’ve been trying and getting errors about invalid path?

    1. Avatar photo
      Paul

      It should work fine, but with SMS or SCCM you sometimes need to configure packages to map a network drive to any letter (or sometimes to a specific letter) during installation.

  10. Stefano

    There is an alternative command: AdbeRdr90_en_US.exe /sAll /sPB /rs
    Decompression in temp folder and full silent.
    You can execute on remote machine with utility: psexec.exe (to execute remote process with alternative credential)

    The sintax is: psexec \%pc% -i -u administrator -p %pwd% \serverswsilentAcrobat9.exe /sAll /sPB
    Where %PC% is pc name variable and %pwd% is variable password of the user administrator.

    Bye

  11. Avatar photo
    Paul

    Will, you simply execute the command “msiexec /qb /i AcroRead.msi” from the folder that you extracted the files to. So for example you could open a command prompt (CMD.exe), navigate to the folder (in my example it is C:TempReader9) and then run the msiexec command.

  12. will

    could you explain waht we do after to have copying the files in another location ?

  13. Kym Charlesworth

    As posted on StealthPuppy, beware deploying AR9 into your active directory environment if you have folder redirection of Application Data to a UNC share. The current version of AR9 has a bug and will immediately terminate with a Visual C++ Runtime Library error upon opening in this circumstance.

  14. Philippe

    and for all domestic users use: setup.exe /sPB
    this switch installs Acrobat Reader 9 in Silent Mode, but show´s you a Progress Bar while installation

  15. Mary

    You are so good. Thanks a lot.

  16. Christian

    Thx… worked perfectly!

Comments are closed.