Help (F1) function not working

Question

Acrobat 9.0:  Trying to use the in-software help, I get only a basic introductory web page.  No real contents or searchable help.
Is this normal, or is it broken.  How to fix it?  ("repair acrobat" from the help menu did not fix it.)

Answer 1

I have been having this same issue with Acrobat X on our network and we are getting ready to roll it out to 2000 users.
I contacted Adobe Support but they weren't really of any help so I sent a bug report yesterday.  By the time I came to work today, I had a response from them.  Here is the information they provided:
Hello Sonya,
This is a know limitation with Acrobat X behind an authenticating proxy. Although the documents references are for CS5 they apply to Acrobat X as well since they use the same technology for Help. Here are some things to try:
Issue
Error "Online Help content cannot be displayed. Verify you can launch your web browser and have access to the Internet" when accessing help in Acrobat X.
Solution
Make the help contents available off-line. See KB http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/849/cpsid_84992.html
Access online help directly in a browsers at: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/pro/using/index.html
Note the 'en_US' part of the link takes you to the English help file. Replace this with a different locale to go to that language version of the help. For example, to go to the French version of the help replace en_US with fr-FR like this: http://help.adobe.com/fr_FR/acrobat/pro/using/index.html
A list of available locales can be found here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\HelpCfg. The folder names in the HelpCfg are the names of the locales which can be used.
Download the PDF version of the help from http://help.adobe.com/en_US/acrobat/pro/using/acrobat_X_pro_help.pdf See above for how to obtain different language versions of this PDF
Additional information
Acrobat X uses a new help client to display the Help contents. If this client is prevented from checking online it will give the error: "Online Help content cannot be displayed. Verify you can launch your web browser and have access to the Internet."
One reason the Help client is blocked from going online is when a (authenticating) proxy is used. Currently the help client is not compatible with such a proxy.
After reading the information provided, I searched for the Help Client and it wasn't on my computer.  I downloaded and installed "Adobe Community Help Client" from the link below.  Apparently, the Help Client is part of the installation for the CS5 Suite of products but not part of just Adobe Reader X or Acrobat X installations. 
http://www.adobe.com/support/chc/
After installing the Help Client, I opened it and changed the preferences to open Help in the browser instead of the Help client. It takes a while to download the file to a local cache and then it opens in IE.