For what its worth I spent quite a bit researching & testing before I came here. I'm not an expert that knows everything about everything, but I'm pretty good at what I do and I dig deep. At the moment I'm three-quarters the way to China on this one. About two weeks ago I ran Process Monitor and I noticed that several files and registry keys get created/updated when you accept the EULA. I recorded all those registry updates and imported them elsewhere but that didn't help which leaves me to believe one or more of those files is key. I haven't explored whether or not it would be possible to copy the files from machine to machine, as I'm concerned there may be some sort of machine specific token that'll trigger the EULA prompt again because something in that file doesn't match some other generated value, but that's the absolute last step. Unfortunately I've spent a tremendous amount of time on this and have bigger fish to fry at the moment so I'm not sure when I can get to it.
I don't have everything but I'm late for an engagement so I'll give you what I have:
- I remember that issue - what a mess! The page says Edit > General but I assume they meant Edit > Preferences > General; In the General section, 'Enable Protected Mode at startup' doesn't exist.
- That command is exclusively for version 6 of the prtk.
- Syntax For Creative Suite 5.5 and Creative Suite 5 begins at the bottom of page 7. In that section, there's nothing for the EULA. There are plenty of references for EULA in the document, but only in the CS6 sections.
- I tried both versions of the prtk. The 5/5.5 version when run alone prints a usage screen and there are no options for the EULA there. Version 6 on the other hand does.
- All the GUIDs are the same ( {AC76BA86-1033-F400-7760-000000000005} ) and that matches up with the example on the page.
- Will shoot for client re-install later as I'm walking out the door.
- This is version 10.1.11 so I'll try 10.1.12 tomorrow but I'm not hopeful.
Again, I'm just walking into this place and from what I've seen, I do not believe Acrobat was packaged with the Customization Wizard. I know that I can re-package it with the EULA suppressed and even add the property at run-time to be sure (unnecessary though) and re-deploy. But that's the problem: we cannot re-deploy!
I opened a case with Adobe and had one of their guys jump in. He added bshowEULA to the Original key in the same path above - something I had not ever seen either - and that produced the same results I mentioned before: Opens fine, closes, EULA prompt. He then went for CS6 version of the prtk and when that wasn't working, got the CS5/5.5 version and tried to execute the same commands for version 6, which naturally failed. I sat back and watched for more than an hour and 15 minutes as he went through the same process I did; God bless this man. He was sort of at a loss at the end of our call. I asked him to go back to the Adobe guys to get their take on what he was seeing.
To me, this is either an Adobe problem (issue with prtk or Acrobat 10 or something else) or an impossible-to-fix situation. (Or it can be fixed but they'll never tell me/us how.)
Everyone's help has been appreciated and I'm open to other potential tests.