CS3 activation upgrade woes...

[dj]

Here at Printcraft we are on the third day of trying to activate our upgrade copy of CS3.

We have installed CS3 on the mac and it accepts the serial number but when we click on the activate button the application just aborts. We have run the special Adobe deinstallation script on level FOUR that blows away all remnants of Adobe software before attempting a reinstall.

We have spent hours on the phone with Adobe tech support and after trying many things, they basically threw up their hands and said we need to reinstall the operating system so that the activation applet could work. The owner of the shop has vetoed that option, as that would mean a least another full day of rebuilding the machine and reinstalling the other applications.

Note that the CS applications run perfectly fine in trial mode, they just abort when you try to activate them.   

I can't believe this is a common occurrence. I mean, I worked in the software development at Creo and I have upgraded entire Prinergy SYSTEMS in less frickin' time then this is taking. If anybody else has run into this weird situation, and got it resolved, please let me know. I'll give you points, I'll give you praise, I'll even give you hugs although I'm a 200+ pounds geeky sysadmins and nobody really enjoys hugging me except for my kids.

But if hugs get the shop out of stinkin' mess, my arms are wide open....

[ninjaPB_43]

run utilities and fix permissions?   fcsk(or whatever it is)?    make sure a firewall isnt preventing your connection to Adobe to Activate....    sorry..  just pissing in the wind here, Im sure you've tried these..

[Joe]

I feel your pain and maybe or maybe not a related matter...I was able to activate CS3 on my G5 but I'll be damned if I can get the upgrades to install and this is a common occurrence that people are bitchin' about at the Adobe forums and Adobe has decided to do nothing about. Not even acknowledge it is happening. By manually installing the updates I've managed to get them all installed except for 3 of them. I've got 5 other machines in the shop that all upgrade just fine. Adobe also recommends a reformat and re-install of the OS like that is no big deal.

I can feel the same attitude creeping into Adobe that Microsoft and Quark are already mired in.

Now this in no way helps you out but it did allow me to get that off my chest. Thanks.

[David]

I'm not sure, but I don't think the deinstalling script actually gets everything.
Have you done a search for "adobe " on your hard drive after the script runs just to see if there are any parts of cs3 left behind?
did you restart your mac before attempting to do the re-install?

tossing things out there, you never know.

I've had trouble installing CS2 and CS3, but it was with the upgrade package and then getting an old serial number to work, not so much activating.

[dj]

Latest update:

I got some other stuff to try but the operator is making plates so this may take a few days to work out. I'll try to keep everybody posted.

(BTW, if you run the deinstall script on level 4, it does blow away pretty much everything Adobe, including your licensed plug-ins like Enfocus Pitstop. So if you ever get in the same situation as me and start a level 4 deinstall, make sure you've got all license numbers written down somewhere.)

[almaink]

Is this the Adobe script that you ran>http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html
If not give it a go. If it is I would create a new user with admin permissions ad try to install from that account before doing a complete system reinstall.