When the issue with grants.gov became publicized, I started looking into what was causing this problem.  The problem is that Adobe programs, especially Acrobat Professional, take a long time to start running, because they are very large applications.  To solve this problem, Adobe decided to create processes that would run Adobe in the background whenever your PC is on.  This speeded loading times, but does mean that whichever Adobe you used recently is still "on" until you stop it, thus clicking on an Adobe icon or a file will open it using whichever version of Adobe Pro or Adobe Reader you used last.  This will happen even if you've set your IE to use a different version.  The short term solution that we use here, since our office completes all g.gov forms, is simple, but it won't work at a decentralized institution.  The Analysts watch carefully which version opens, and if the wrong version opens we follow the below steps.

Close any open Adobe files, or browser windows
Click Ctrl+Alt+Delete
Open Task Manager
Click on "Processes" tab
Close either the "AcroRd32.exe" process or the "Acrotray.exe" process

You should then be able to open any version of Adobe you have installed.  Be careful if you choose this method though, ending an important process can kill parts of your computer.

Hopefully Adobe and grants.gov will come up with a reasonable long term solution.

***************************
Trish Brock
Grants Associate
Grants Development Office
Cal Poly
Bldg 38, Room 152
805-756-1449
***************************

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@hrinet.org] On Behalf Of Adrienne Blalack
Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 9:00 AM
To: xxxxxx@hrinet.org
Subject: Re: [RESADM-L] Grants.gov Adobe forms solution/Internet Explorer

Thank you to James and to the listserv for providing these helpful hints for
computer users running multiple Adobe programs.

The PCs in our office (a centralized sponsored programs office) are running
both Reader 8.1.1 and Professional 7.?, with Windows XP operating systems. I
tried James' solution and it appeared to work until I downloaded the test files
from Grants.gov. It seems that Reader 8.1.1 did not get set as the default for
Internet Explorer, so the downloaded files defaulted to Professional when
opened in Explorer and subsequently saved to my computer. I know how to
get around this by right-clicking and choosing the appropriate program to
download/open the files, but I don't want to have to do this (and as has been
mentioned, we can't necessarily rely on others on campus who are preparing
the applications to remember to do this). Do any RESADM'ers know how to set
the Internet Explorer default to Reader when both Reader and Professional
versions reside on the PC? A Google and Adobe Help search did not provide
much help.

Many thanks,

Adrienne L. Blalack, CRA
University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center

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======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
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