Having just bought a new computer with a rather small (100 GB) SSD OS drive, I’m making every effort to install programs on the terabyte D: drive. So I get more than a bit cranky with applications that either don’t let you choose the install path or don’t respect it after installation.
One of those applications is Adobe Reader. If you go to Adobe’s website to install it, it will detect your OS and offer you the appropriate installer, along with a bunch of opt-out crap ware. Then, it’s just a straight install, with the only option being whether or not to allow Adobe to install updates automatically (I don’t).
So digging around for a way to customize the installation, I ran across the Adobe Customization Wizard, which seemed a bit like overkill for my problem, but worth investigating. I found instructions on how to retrieve an unencumbered and unpackable version of Reader. Hmm, this has potential.
For your future installation pleasure, skip the Adobe website and go to the FTP site! For the current Windows version, browse this folder. These versions do not have any optional opt-out toolbars or virus scanners packed into them.
To unpack the executable, run this, updating with your folder paths:
adbeRdr11009_en_us.exe -nos_o"D:\Downloads\Adobe" -nos_ne
You will be presented with a standard Windows unpacking dialog box. Once completed, go to the extraction folder and run the MSI file. Voila! A prompt to pick the installation path. Exactly what I wanted!
