Since updating Adobe Reader 8 the following message appears whenever I start the computer “The computer must be restarted before updating can continue. Restart now?”. If I click “No” then the computer continues to function as normal, but this seems to be an unnecessary nuisance. Is there any way to get rid of this message on startup? The computer is running Windows XP Professional SP2.

This is a common problem which I have seen numerous other users experience. The message which appears is being produced by Adobe Updater, and can occur if Adobe Reader attempted an update and the update failed. When the Adobe Updater runs, it places itself into a registry key in the Windows registry so that it will run on the next startup to complete the update process. However, if the update process never completes (due to the update failing, for one reason or another) the Adobe Updater entry will never be removed from the startup registry key, and it will always run on startup. Fortunately, there are a few ways we can resolve this issue.

First, we should check whether there is an available update for Adobe Reader. If we can successfully update Adobe Reader then this should stop the problem. Open Adobe Reader and go to the “Help” menu > “Check for Updates”. If any updates are found, select to download and install the update. Once the update has completed downloading and installing, restart the computer to check whether the problem has been resolved.

Should the problem continue, or there are no updates available, then we need to manually remove the Adobe Updater process from loading on startup. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “regedit” (without the quotes) and click OK. Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionRun. In the right-hand pane you should see an entry named “AdobeUpdater.exe”. Right-click on this entry and select “Delete”. Once this entry has been deleted, exit the Registry Editor and restart the computer. The message should no longer appear on startup.