Comments on: CS3 Activation Limits

By: Esol Esek

Esol Esek — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:01:10 +0000

As soon as I can get away from Adobe I will. Their activation system is nonsense, and their software is full of disasters and fixes that weren’t broken in the first place. Pshop could be a much better piece of software, and the day someone gets there, I will be gone forever.

By: Vance

Vance — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 18:11:28 +0000

Having installed CS3 on an old hard drive that didn’t migrate over to the new hard drive because of copyright issues and the backup and restore program failing to recognize a customer’s need to upgrade has caused a critical problem with my activating my LEGAL copy of Adobe Photoshop.

The old operating system isn’t really workable…

Any reason why I shouldn’t be upset over this?

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:38:33 +0000

@Mac Day. This problem is not handled by Adobe Customer Service. There should have been a phone number on the activation denial screen to call.

As for the email, log into your Adobe account using your Adobe ID and change the email address there.

By: Mac Day

Mac Day — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 03:24:15 +0000

I don’t condone pirated software but Adobe is still a pain to work with when it comes to activation of the CS3 product. I installed my suite on a desktop two years ago. Early this year I changed email carriers so my email address changed. After Windows 7 came out I upgraded so I had to perform a reload – no problem I was covered.

The problem occured three weeks ago when I had a hard drive crash and I had to do another reload. I received the famous “Too Many Activations” notice.

I called Adobe Customer service and spoke to a nice gentleman from India and explained the chain of events and the problem I was having. I was told I had to deactivate one of the installs – I explained a second time that I could not deactivate since the system had crashed. I provided the serial number from my case. Twenty minutes later he came back on the line and told me that he needed the email address that registered the software which I provided. He advised that before he could work with me he had to get confirmation from the email address that registered the software that it was OK to force a “Deactivation”. I explained for the third time that I had changed email addresses and no longer had access to the original email account. After an hour of trying to get it resolved I asked to speak to a supervisor.

I was on hold for an additional 14 minutes before a supervisor came on the line. I re-explained everything to him and asked for assistance. He said he would like to help and asked for the serial number which I provided. Five minutes later I was again asked – “can you provide me with the email address used to register your software so I can send a confirmation email to get approval for the forced deactivation? Then we can take care of it for you?” AARRRGGGG I thought. I again explained that I had changed email carriers and the registration address was no longer valid since I could not receive a confirmation email. I was politely informed that they could not help since I could not confirm using the old email address. Two hours on the phone.

In a nutshell – because of this I have a $1,700 Gray colored drink coaster.

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 12:28:11 +0000

@Emagrecer. No, in fact they don’t even exist in earlier versions anymore as Adobe has lifted them.

By: Emagrecer

Emagrecer — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 10:24:53 +0000

Do these activation limits still exist in the new versions of the software? I have an office, home office and a laptop that I would like to use the software on. Since its a big investment I think its important to be aware of this. Thank for the great article, as you said nobody seems to be testing these limitations.

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:13:29 +0000

If you lost an activation due to a harddrive crash, that’s a completely different story.

This is about activation cycles and the limit of 20 has been lifted.

By: Toby

Toby — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 22:07:13 +0000

Bob,

The limits have not been removed (yet). Just got off a web chat with Adobe. They had to increase my activations, as I was left with just one, on my old laptop. My new laptop refused to activate until the limit was increased.

That said, perhaps it was because I have lost activations due to crashes/stupidity etc. I can’t imagine I have activated 20 times, but I definitely lost one to a crash.

By: Bob Levine

Bob Levine — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:45:50 +0000

@Drapeta: whatever the problem it had nothing to do with the limits discussed in the original post.

As already pointed out, those limits have been removed.

By: Drapeta

Drapeta — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:51:48 +0000

How strange it was to find out that i had too many activations.

I have the software and installed it from a disk as well as using my own serial (or whatever its called)

I format my computers quite a lot because there is a lot of junk and i dont like running virus scanners (mainly because they slow the computer as much as if you had a virus and op systems were never meant to run for years and years)

I have never reinstalled twice on the same night though on both laptop and desktop (which i did tonight) and my lappy was refused. I will probably call adobe tomorrow, however I know i will reinstall at least two more times on each computer this year and burn though the extra five activations.

Even though I have a legit copy of adobe it really makes me think that its a pain in the ass to keep calling and that i should just crack the program.

What a pain in the butt, but all of this has been said much more eloquently, so I will not reiterate.