Acrobat 9 Pro will NOT install (CS4 Design Premium)

Question

Acrobat 9 Pro will NOT install (CS4 Design Premium)
Acrobat Pro 9 will not install (FAILED), although every other program on the CS4 DVDs did install properly.
I have followed the instructions, and have tried with no programs running, not even virus protection (which is an insane thing for Adobe to demand of a product being installed where the installation routine is expecting an Internet connection): FAILED.
I uninstalled my Acrobat 6 Pro, (a standalone Pro version that I had to have  a few years ago.) I uninstalled that working program knowing I had no idea where my original Adobe Acrobat CD is located, so I was essentially cutting myself off of Acrobat Pro if the Acrobat 9 Pro install continued to fail.
I reported this to Adobe support online.
I have followed the instructions to disable startup items and services, then tried the Acrobat 9 Pro install: FAILED.
At that point, I gave up installing Acrobat 9 Pro. I didn't have any more time to screw with it - I would re-visit the installation failure later.
Lo and behold, a client sent me a PDF file of a brochure, in an email, and I had to grab some text from it to put on his website (Done in Dreamweaver CS4.) Well, damn, now I'll have to go back and get that install to work...FAILED!
Suspecting a problem in the installation routine on the DVD, I decided to download the trial version of Acrobat 9 Pro. So, I did. It downloaded and installed without a hiccup, and I had Acrobat 9 Pro working for 30 days...
I did what I had to do, using the trial version, then figured I would re-visit the installation issue later, when I had a few hours to dedicate to all the hell of calling Adobe software support, handholding, maybe registry edits, multiple reboots, and multiple attempts at doing everything again, just so the support person would know that I did follow all the steps correctly to prove thw outcome is sill FAILED!
Oh crap, I got another PDF file. No problem, I thought, I don't need to edit the PDF, just read it. When I tried to open the file, Acrobat 9 Pro plastered a screen over the program - the screen saying my 30 day trial version has now run out, demanded a serial number, or quit. My CS4 serial number would not activate it, and so I had to quit, not even being able to read the PDF file.
So, I un-installed the trial version of Acrobat 9 Pro that had installed without a hitch and had worked flawlessly for 30 days.
Now I'm going to have to visit hell, and get the software that I paid hundreds of dollars for to work...
Please STOP and NOTE: Acrobat 9 Pro installed perfectly from the downloaded Internet version. What does that tell you? There are no operating system issues, no hardware compatibility issues  (which I knew anyway, as the OS and hardware is up to date.) Even more significantly, there is no issue with the Windows registry, or other versions of Adobe Acrobat that had been installed before in the machine. My conclusion was that it has to be a problem with the installation routine on the CS4 disks.
So, I spent an hour on the phone with Adobe personnel: software support, to customer service, to sales, to customer service, and back to sales. After software support came to the conclusion that I needed to UNINSTALL ALL OF CS4, and run a clean-up utility, I knew I had to try getting a new set of DVDs and hope the installation routine problems/bugs had been worked out.
After being batted back and forth by Adobe Customer Service and Adobe Sales, I finally got someone to agree to send a set of DVDs to me.
I got the DVDs. I tried to install Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro: FAILED
As I told the software support person, I do not want to un-install the entire CS4 suite. I have all of those programs working fine, and have about a dozen web sites within Dreamweaver CS4 painstakingly set up and active, and some of them are current projects that I am working on daily. I also have multiple extensions installed, and spent quite a bit of time getting all of those programs set up for my preferences and my work flow. I DO NOT WANT to uninstall the entire suite of applications to get Acrobat 9 Pro to install.
And the conclusion of the "sophisticated" Adobe Support Advisor as to what specifically was the instalation issue?
Adobe Support Advisor
The module found no solutions to report for the selected log file.
If you continue to have difficulties with the application,
please contact Adobe Support: http://www.adobe.com/support
System Information :
Operating System = Windows XP
Locale = en
At this point, what I want is to know what registry keys to edit and which folder(s) to delete to eliminate previous traces of Acrobat. In other words, just exactly the tiny piece of the "clean-up utility" that I need to run in order to allow the *Y#^%@#&#(& installation routine to work for Acrobat 9 Pro. I have no intention of uninstalling Dreamweaver CS4, as that is my business livlihood, and I know that my Dreamweaver CS4 client files/sites could not be read by earlier Dreamweaver versions. Asking me to uninstall Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign, and Fireworks is insane. Your bad installation routine is not my fault, and you cannot expect me spend countless hours getting all those programs set up the way I want and with all my client/work files working correctly and all the extensions set up properly. So, if Adobe software support refuses to tell me what registry keys need to be changed, then I want Adobe Sales to send me a new, standalone version of Acrobat 9 Pro on disk.
Dennis

Answer 1

I hit the same problem except I had a Reader X installed not a pro version.  For me the solution was to really make sure that nothing else was running.  I followed the steps from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2438651#reso2 the link is goofy so here is the pertinent text:
Programs that are currently running on your computer may be interfering with the installation processDisable programs that might be interfering with the installation process. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start
, type msconfig in the Search box, and then click msconfig.exe.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password, or provide confirmation.
On the General tab, click Selective startup, and then click to clear the Load startup items check box.
Click Services, click Hide all Microsoft services, and then click Disable all.
Click OK, and then click Restart.
Try running your software program installation.
When you are finished troubleshooting the problem, restart the computer in Normal Startup mode. To do this, follow these steps:
Click Start
, type msconfig in the Search box, and then clickmsconfig.exe.
If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password, or provide confirmation.
On the General tab, click Normal startup, click OK, and then click Restart.