TechNote

Install all Acrobat 8 patches in one step with Adobe Bootstrapper and patch sequencing

Acrobat 8 supports Patch Sequencing. This is a technology that lets the Windows Installer (among other things) to determine which order patches are applied and also allows patches to be applied during installation. Adobe Systems has provided the Adobe Bootstrapper (setup.exe) which can automate a lot of this.

Modifying bootstrapper to install all the patches during installation

Copy all setup files to a directory on the network or local system.
Download the replacement bootstrapper (setup.exe)from the Adobe website at http://www.adobe.com/support/acrobat/ts/documents/kb403246/Setup.exe.
Download all the Acrobat 8 patches here: http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=1&platform=Windows and place them into the same directory you copied Acrobat 8 to.
Add the following line to setup.ini under the [Product] section:
[Product] PATCH=AcrobatUpd810_efgj_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd811_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd812_all_incr.msp
Note: it is not necessary to use path statements or quotes.
Run setup.exe

Known issues:

During installation of the patch the ADDLOCAL property is not set. The work-around is to append ADDLOCAL=ALL to the CmdLine= section of the setup.ini. We will be addressing this issue in a future update.

Example Setup.ini:

Note: this file is included with the application. The only changes made were the PATCH= section, CmdLine= sections (under [Startup] and [Product]). With the exception of the PATCH= line and the addition of the ADDLOCAL=ALL property these changes were made automatically with the Adobe Customization Wizard.

[Startup] RequireOS=Windows 2000;Windows XP RequireMSI=3.0 RequireIE=6.0.2600.0 CmdLine=/sl"1033" /sPB

[Product] msi=AcroPro.msi Languages=1033;1031;1036 1033=English (United States) 1031=German (Germany) 1036=French (France) CmdLine=TRANSFORMS="AcroPro.mst" ADDLOCAL=ALL PATCH=AcrobatUpd810_efgj_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd811_all_incr.msp;AcrobatUpd812_all_incr.msp

[Windows 2000] PlatformID=2 MajorVersion=5 ServicePackMajor=4

[Windows XP] PlatformID=2 MajorVersion=5 MinorVersion=1 ServicePackMajor=2

[MSI Updater] Path=WindowsInstaller-KB893803-v2-x86.exe

There is an issue regarding PDF port monitor not being created which will result in the user not being able to create PDF files using file > print in an application. In 8.1.2 the CreatePortMonitor custom action was inadvertently moved from 6468 to 726 which falls outside the InstallInitialize and the InstallFinalize (in the InstallExecuteSequence table). The problem only affects users doing a one step install of Acrobat 8.1.2 (in other words - from nothing to 8.1.2 in one install). To work-around this issue download the following transform:

6468.mst

Append it to the CmdLine= section as follows:

CmdLine=TRANSFORMS="AcroPro.mst;6468.mst" ADDLOCAL=ALL