Yay, I've got a working build!! (as a test version, but it doesn't crash)
Thanks to your answers, Adobe's CS 5.5 is now running on Windows 7 64 bit.
Here are my settings:
- Windows 7 32bit with SP1 and the latest updates, withour Visual C++ runtime (this is included in the CS 5.5 installation
- logged in as administrative user with full priveleges
- after pre scan, I installed the suite in C:\ADCS55 and started every application once
- after post scan I uncommented "Wow64=0", "LoadDotNetFromSystem=Win7" in the Package.ini and renamed the folder "Adobe Illustrator CS5.1 Settings" to "AI_prefs_old (you can find that folder in "%AppData%\Adobe", in the project dir)
- then I've built the Thinapp, deployed in on the test box and tada, no "Missing Plugin" error anymore
The CS 5.5 setup was executed directly from the ESD-files. For some reason the Adobe Application Manager package didn't contain Acrobat X.
This thinapped version of CS 5.5 runs on 64bit Windows only, on my 32bit Windows XP (and maybe Windows 7, couldn't test that) the applications crash with a "Licensing error" - error code 131:4.
In the new year I will try those steps with the Adobe License, but I assume that should work either.
So far, thank you Toby and Lakshman for your help.