You could try helping out the automatic uninstalls a little.
I had a lot of conflicts awhile back from having Capture 1, reader 2, 3, and 4 and Distiller 2 and 4 on my machine.
Im running win98se, and jv16 power tools to help me out with registry work.
First I used the automatic uninstall for all of those applications that were listed.
Then I looked on c drive for any directories related to adobe and deleted them.
Then I went to program files and deleted adobe directories in program files and in program files\common files.
Then rebooted system and used jv16 powertools to search for any adobe entries in the registry and deleted them.
Then rebooted again, and went back to reinstall of adobe apps i wanted to use.
I still have a couple of problems-There is some true type related stuff that got installed with the really old adobe apps im not getting rid of and the reader 3 links from my lotus software override the reader 4 links from an install of acrobat 4, but at least the software installed and can be made to run.
If you're not running adobe anything except one version of acrobat, the approach above might get you going again. I dont know what variations might be required by win2k or xp.