CutePDF is free and works with everything (as it's installed as a printer). It also doesn't put any banners on the PDF.
Acrobat v5 is ANCIENT, and time/software/OSs have moved on. This leaves troubleshooting this issue akin to hitting a moving target. You might fix it one day and it breaks with an update the next.
FYI, there ARE a lot of Acrobat v5 copies on client machines I see.