Key Path: SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown The New Registry Properties screen will appear and you will have to enter few values so at the end it will look like that below.
Select the desired OU, right-click and create new GPO (I assume you want to create a new one, but of course you can edit an existing one).
In the GPMC window, browse to the required GPO that is linked to the OU or domain where the computers are located, then edit it, or, if needed, create a new GPO.If you are using an AD-based GPO, open Group Policy Management Console (Start > Run > gpmc.msc) from a Windows Vista//R2/2012 computer that is a member of the domain.As always, you should back up the registry before making your changes. Edit the Windows registry at your own risk. Warning! If you make an error while editing the registry, you can potentially cause Windows to lock-up, fail, or be unable to boot, requiring you to reinstall Windows or restore from a backup. Of course it can be created manually using registry editor (regedit.exe), but in large environments you surely want to automate the process and apply it to large amount of computers. This registry entry does not exist by default, so it has to be created. By simply setting the value to 0, the updates will be disabled. The registry entry called: bUpdater and it is a DWORD value. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown
There is one registry key which gives you the ability to disable updates functionality.
The idea behind disabling the Adobe Reader update is very simple. If you open now the Adobe Reader application and you click on Help menu, you will see those updates are available. You might still want to apply the updates to your network, but maybe you prefer doing it in a time frame you choose or want to test it before applying. In this article I will show you an easy way to disable automatic Adobe Reader XI updates from running per users requests. Note: Of course there are many other methods of pushing registry changes to workstations. So how do we block Adobe updates from being installed by our end users? A common and very useful way of doing that in a domain environment is using Group Policy. In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps to disable Adobe Reader XI updates with Group Policy. When we’ll be done with our testing, we’ll let those updates flow in, or perhaps we never will, it all depends on what we see fit at that time. You know what this can lead to, right? We need to control these updates and prevent regular users from updating their workstations. What makes out life more complex is the fact that for some software, such as the ones from Adobe, updates can be done by our end users. However, because many of these updates were known at one time or another during IT history to cause serious issues with whatever they were supposed to fix, we as responsible IT pros usually want to test these updates before applying them blindly on our productions systems.
One of these struggles is to keep our software, operating systems, and hardware up to date with the latest patches, fixes, or service packs. Many system administrators have encountered this at least once in our lifetime, or should I say at least once a week: We constantly find ourselves trying to control our network and environment, protecting it from malware, constantly keeping it up to date, and in many cases also protecting it from users that can be blamed for our hair loss among many other things.