Comments on: Use this fix-it tool to preview PDF files on 64-bit Windows

By: Leo Davidson

Leo Davidson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:13:20 +0000

Mart sent me a PDF and I was able to reproduce the problem, or what I think was the same problem.

There’s an updated version of the installer on my website. (Make sure it says Adobe_Reader_x64_fixes_v2_002_installer.zip with the “_002″, if not hit Ctrl-F5 to force a refresh.)

As far as I can tell, this was/is a bug in the Windows shell. I added a comment about the bug here in case it trips up other people:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb774612%28VS.85%29.aspx

Thanks for the help, Mart!

By: Leo Davidson

Leo Davidson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:12:45 +0000

Mart: Could you make one of the PDFs available somewhere, or email it to me? (Address is at the bottom of most pages on my site.)

By: Mart Geronia

Mart Geronia — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:39:20 +0000

Leo: I reinstalled Adobe Reader and re-applied the fix and it didn’t do anything. Also my color-depth is in 32-bit.

It seems that given a set of pdfs in my folder, some would have their correct thumbnails and some would have black pictures.

By: Leo Davidson

Leo Davidson — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:55:08 +0000

Mart: Try doing a Repair install of Adobe Reader if you didn’t try it already.

(If you do, note that you’ll need to re-apply the preview handler fix. There should be an item for it in your start menu; no need to run my installer again.)

If it still doesn’t work, can you tell me which screenmode your desktop is in? The colour depth might be important (e.g. 32-bit, 16-bit)

By: Mart Geronia

Mart Geronia — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 06:13:23 +0000

I tried your fix and regarding the preview it worked; but on the case of thumbnails, pdf thumbnails show only black pictures.

By: Leo Davidson

Leo Davidson — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:02:24 +0000

There’s a new fix on my page for the PDF thumbnails now.

By: David Moisan

David Moisan — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 23:33:16 +0000

Ed, I am not surprised.

The Adobe plug-in for Sharepoint has the same problem. They used the wrong GUID for AppID there too.

By: Narg

Narg — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:53:01 +0000

Now only if someone would fix/create a Flash driver for 64-bit! (Or MS would release a 64-bit Silverlight, then we’d be away from Adobe even more!)

By: Leo Davidson

Leo Davidson — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:33:40 +0000

“Oh, and the community here should take a bow too.”

Yes, thank-you again to Ed and the people who provided info/feedback/suggestions/confirmations in the comments before.

That info helped to create the one-click fix tool which made the fix accessible to many more people.

By: Rob Lindemann

Rob Lindemann — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 23:30:26 +0000

This is precisely why I switched over to Foxit’s pdf viewer and Outlook/Explorer preview handler months ago. Granted, the preview handler is a third-party utility, but at least it’s been available for a long time. You can find it here = http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2008/05/09/foxit-pdf-preview-handler.aspx

By: Guus Brugman

Guus Brugman — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:33:45 +0000

Works great and very simple. The Adobe Reader preview handler x64 fixer v1.1.exe is well made, thank you Leo and Ed for sharing this.