Adobe LiveCycle Designer 8.2 ES keeps crashing at Startup

[Former Community Member]

I've upgraded from Adobe Acrobat Professional 7.0 to Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0. Acrobat works fine. However, every time I launch Designer I get a debug window at the splash screen. The program freezes and quits everytime. I've repaired, uninstalled, and rebooted several times. 7.0 is completely uninstalled. I've even checked the registry. Still it freezes and crashes.



I'm on XP SP2 and have .NET Frameworks 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and all their SPs.



Please help.

[Former Community Member]

I too have encountered this problem. I had not used LiveCycle Designer ES 8.1 for a while, but when I recently started the app, I got the fault error and a report was sent to those nice folks at Microsoft.



I had recently installed SQL Server 2008 Express. After uninstalling it, LiveCycle worked just fine. (I did not get into switching versions of mfcm80u.dll as some have.)



How can we get LiveCycle and SQL Server to co-exist peacefully?! Is the mfcm80u.dll the key?

[Former Community Member]

I just had to uninstall SQL Server 2008 Express also. Any resolution to the problem?

[Brian_Baldwin]

I am running Win XP (with all patches up to date). After upgrading from Adobe Pro 7.0 to Adobe Pro Vers. 9.0 Livecycle crashed on startup. (I also installed MS C#, MS Web Developer, .NET 3.5, dotnetnuke, etc. previously.) When I tried to open a Livecycle file or launch the application, it crashed with the following error:

Application exception occurred:

App: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 9.0\Designer 8.2\FormDesigner.exe (pid=4112)

When: 10/30/2008 @ 14:17:47.105

Exception number: c0000005 (access violation)

I tried renaming the folder Designer\"8.2" to "8.2 old", but without success. I then went to Control Panel, Remove Programs, and uninstalled anything that had MS SQL associated with the name. After rebooting I am now launching the program without a problem.

Hope this helps someone.

Brian Baldwin-

[Former Community Member]

What if you need sql server installed and operational?



Where do you get older versions of mfcm80u.dll?

[Former Community Member]

Where did you replace the mfc80u.dll? It exists in multiple places on my Vista machine.

[Former Community Member]

Hi all,<br /><br />Had same problems and solutions with the SQL Server 2008. Not only that but encountered problems as soon as I upgraded to Acrobat v9. Had Designer v8.1 installed at the time, and the new v9 installer never mentioned anything about it during installation. I started over with a clean machine, brand new formatted hard drive, new everything, this time, put Acrobat v9 on at the end, then made partition bakups. Of course, I had problems with designer but was ready this time.<br /><br />When I absolutely HAVE to get a job out, if it's broke, I boot into restored partition that has the working system, but that's a last resort. Most times I first delete the <user> folder 8.2 (mentioned above) and also I delete the whole registry key under HKCU under Software/Adobe/Designer then start it up. This works for an hour or so, and sometimes keeps on working ok, that is, until the next time I have to run Access to make new databases & connections, or change my Microsoft Office settings. <br /><br />I'll go into more detail if ANYONE is interested, but Hey, I feel this is ADOBE's job, NOT MINE!!<br /><br />How about some ANSWERS ADOBE???

[Former Community Member]

We've been working with Microsoft on the problem. SQL Server installs a newer version of the MFC DLL on top of the one we install, and the new version has a critical bug. We're working with MS to get a fix (there may be a hotfix already for this, as other programs have this problem as well). We should find out very soon what the resolution is, and we'll post that answer on the forums and issue a tech note. For now, if you uninstall SQL Server (and you may have to uninstall Designer and reinstall it), that should fix the problem.

[Former Community Member]

We need both SQL Server AND LiveCycle Designer to be installed. Any resolution yet to this problem?

[Former Community Member]

Mine was working but stopped this morning. I have not installed anything different. It opens the program but if I try to load an existing pdf or start a new one it crashes right when it is about to display the pdf.

[Former Community Member]

I also had to have SQL installed as well as Designer, so I tried SQL Server 2005 Express and it caused no further problems. I don't know if you have to have SQL 2008, but maybe this info will help you. It was tricky at the Microsoft site getting to the SQL 2005 files but keep trying, you've got to really pay attention or the screens will take you to v2008.



I've still not seen evidence of the fix out yet from Microsoft (to the MFC file) mentioned a few posts back by stanier.



Cheers

[Former Community Member]

Guys try the following workaround:

You have to modify mfc80u.dll's redirection policy file as follows:

1) Go to C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.Microsoft.VC80.MFC_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_x-ww_0f75c32e\8.0.50727.1833.policy.

2) Open it in a text editor.

3)Change the following line to two lines


.

Peace

[Craig_Buffalo]

Good Morning,

I am having the same problem with LiveCycle. On your post I cannot see the two lines that I am suppose to alter. If its not too much trouble could you help me out and let me know what i'm suppose to change? Thank you in advance for helping me out.

[Former Community Member]

Hamzeh,



Thank you for the tip. On my XP laptop I got as far as:



C:\WINDOWS\WinSxS\Policies\x86_policy.8.0.Microsoft.VC80.MFC_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_x-ww_0f75c32e



but could not find the file \8.0.50727.1833.policy.



I have two policy files there: 8.0.50727.42.policy and ......762.policy files there.



I am going to re-load everything on my Vista laptop (where I have been having the problems) and see what happens.



I did check the path you suggested and entire \Policies folder is missing! May be a quirk of Vista.

[Former Community Member]

Hamzeh,



Tried your workaround unfortunately it would not work for me still getting error.



AppName: formdesigner.exe AppVer: 8.0.2073.1 ModName: mfc80u.dll

ModVer: 8.0.50727.1833 Offset: 0004c655



Cheers

[Former Community Member]

Renaming C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Adobe\Designer\8.2 to 8.2old worked for me as well - but I do not have SQL server 200x like others so this may only work for some people.

[Former Community Member]

We have been working with Microsoft to get a hotfix for this problem and have just received the hotfix but haven't been able to verify if it fixes the issue yet. Once we do that we'll provide some sort of access to the hotfix (because Microsoft won't be posting). I'll let you know when we have it posted.

[Former Community Member]

Hello All,



We finally received the hot fix from Microsoft.



It has been posted to http://www.adobe.com/support/products/enterprise/support_knowledge_center_livecycle_ES_server.html



It's right at the top of the page entitled "Fix for SQL-Server 2008/Designer conflict".



Thanks for your patience

[GrayBugs]

Can someone tell me where to get this patch?

When I try to download vcredist_x86.exe, I get a 404 error from the Adobe server.

http://download.adobe.com/pub/adobe/livecycle/vcredist_x86/vcredist_x86.exe

Not Found

The requested URL /pub/adobe/livecycle/vcredist_x86/vcredist_x86.exe was not found on this server.

[Former Community Member]

A knowledge base article on this topic has also been posted.



Please see:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb407823&sliceId=2

[hvac_pro]

Thanks for the link.

This is the fix that worked for me. All is well.

A knowledge base article on this topic has also been posted.

Please see:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb407823&sliceId=2

Make sure to download and install this file:

Fix for SQL-Server 2008/Designer conflict

Date: November 26, 2008

Download: vcredist_x86.exe

Issue: Microsoft’s mfc80u.dll (version 8.0.50727.1833) installed by SQL Server 2008 causes Designer 8.2.1 to crash on launch.

Fix: Installing the attached vcredist_x86.exe will install a new version (8.0.50727.3079 ) of the Microsoft redistributable DLLs including mfc80u.dll to resolve this issue hope this helps someone else.

Dan

[Former Community Member]

This fix did not solve the problem with LiveCycle 8.2 In fact, it was in working order before I installed this fix. Upon reboot and startup of LiveCycle it failed to create a new blank form, it crashed, same as before and would not open any older form, it crashed.



Note: SQL Server 2008 was not installed at the time I installed the fix.



Do I have to first put SQL Server 2008 back on my system, THEN install the hot fix?