Can no longer access Acrobat shared review server

Question

Hello. We are using Acrobat 8, and yesterday I discovered that I can recreate a lost shared-review PDF by generating a new PDF, and then copying the comment-repository XML files from the original review PDF to the folder belonging to the new review PDF.  That was great, but I wanted other staff members to not fiddle with the XML files, so I set that folder (named "meta") to read-only.  It was previously shared and set to full-access for everybody.
Today, I found that nobody had access to their shared reviews anymore, so I hastily reset the access to the "meta" folder back to full-access, and I re-shared the "meta" folder for everybody.  It isn't helping.  No-one can access their shared reviews.
Note: immediately after I recreated that lost PDF, one of the reviewers added several comments and uploaded them to the server, so I know everything was working fine then.  I set the "meta" folder to read-only sometime later, and I think that's what caused the problem.
Any ideas?
I've just now tried posting a new shared-review PDF, but this time I created a new shared-review folder location, pointing to the exact same actual network folder.  The only thing different between the two connections is the descriptive names attached to the connections, which appear in the drop-down list of locations.  The original connection's descriptive name is "Acrobat Server" (named by one of my colleagues) and the new one I left unchanged from the default descriptive name "My Network Folder".  This new shared-review PDF works fine, so I know that access to the "meta" folder is fine, but how can I fix the older review PDFs?
A workaround for my problem is therefore to re-post all the currently active shared-review PDFs, using the "My Network Folder" connection, and then copy the XML files to the new PDF.  I just tried it, and it works, but that's only a practical workaround to fix the 10 to 15 recently posted review PDFs, and it'll only work if people still have the original PDFs they posted.  All the older review PDFs will still be read-only.
Also, does anyone know how to remove a folder location so that only the one that works appears in the drop-down list?
Updates:
1) The above workaround only works for me.  Other reviewers still cannot access the new PDF.    So I don't have a valid workaround after all.
2) One more thing: if I try to post a new PDF using the old location "Acrobat Server", it fails at the step where it tries to create the XML file and folder.
3) Earlier, I also tried creating a new shared-review folder location in another directory, and I noticed that the metadata folder was not shared.  So maybe I don't need to share the "meta" folder after all, and maybe something changed in our corporate network overnight?

Answer 1

Thank you for your answer.
I have narrowed my problem down to a connectivity problem with the comment server.  We have Acrobat 8 installed on a machine named "acrobat".  On the acrobat machine, the shared-review PDFs are stored in a folder named "documents".  Each member of our team has a subfolder within the documents folder.  i.e. this structure:
documents
     john
     jane
     david
     amy
The comment server XML files are stored in a folder named "meta", at the same level as the above name folders:
documents
     john
     jane
     david
     amy
     meta
When we send documentation out for review, we send reviewers a link something like "\\acrobat\john\123_review.pdf".  Reviewers are able to open the PDF, but they get an error message saying "Adobe Reader cannot connect to the Review Server: acrobat".
I believe that the message means that Reader is not able to find the comment server in the "meta" folder.  But the meta folder is definitely there, and is write-accessible for everyone.  Any user on our network is able to manually open the meta folder, create a new file inside the folder, edit and save that file, delete the file, etc.
These pdfs that no longer work, always used to work.  I had changed permissions on the meta folder, but after people reported connectivity problems, I changed the permissions back to full control for all users, and even added more users with full control, but people still can't connect.  What I need is to find out where these PDFs are looking for the comment server.  It looks like they're looking in the correct place: the acrobat machine, but maybe inside the PDFs, the comment server location is stored in a certain way.
Another thing: when anybody tries to initiate a shared review, the process fails at the point where Acrobat 8 tries to create a comment server folder.  The person who set up Acrobat 8 for us also defined the shared-review location for us (a drop-down box containing all locations appears in the first or second screen of the dialog box when you initiate a shared review.  Only one location appears for us: the location defined by that person, and it's named "acrobat server").  But I don't know how to find out what that shared-review location is. Acrobat 8 lets you remove a location, but doesn't let you edit it.  If I could see what the location is, I could see if the path is somehow defined irregularly.  e.g. without the fully qualified domain name or something like that.
I subsequently added another location, "my network folder", and pointed it to the same meta folder.  The "my network folder" location works for me.  I can post a shared review, and it connects to the comment server properly.  But this works only for me: when other users open that same shared review pdf, they get the "cannot connect" error message above.  Again, if I could see explicitly how "my network folder" is saved in Acrobat, and also see how the PDF file has stored that location, I could see if there's a mismatch.