I just got off the phone with Adobe tech support. I've done something that none of their software protection programmers never expected of a user (CS3). It seems there is a limit to the number of times you can deactivate CS3 (21 times) and today I exceeded the limit and got this big old dialog box telling me to call tech support immediately!

Seems the programmers never thought that someone would deactivate the program more than 21 times. Let alone have more deactivations than activations.They had no plan, no solution except to reset my "count" and have me uninstall and reinstall the entire CS3 package. (oh the joy!)

How did I manage to do this? Well, in setting up my new MacPro and moving from OS Tiger to Leopard, I had backups of both Tiger and Leopard partitions making a total of 4 copies. I would often forget to deactivate CS3 before doing a clone so I would boot into the clone partition, run CS3 and deactivate the copy.

So, be forewarned.

I feel your pain! (Heard someone somewhere say that once.)

Anyway you are fortunate indeed to have gotten someone who could understand what you were telling them. Most of my tech calls end up with me saying "I can't understand you." :depressed

Steve C.


[QUOTE=Swampy;191962]I just got off the phone with Adobe tech support. I've done something that none of their software protection programmers never expected of a user (CS3). It seems there is a limit to the number of times you can deactivate CS3 (21 times) and today I exceeded the limit and got this big old dialog box telling me to call tech support immediately![QUOTE]

Ha, Ha! Good job Swampy. I can just hear those tech support folks now "Those pesky users ..."

Redeux... Second call to Adobe

I ran the Adobe unistaller and reinstalled CS3. Seems the uninstaller didn't uninstall anything!!! I was told I would have to reenter my SN and register etc., but those dialog boxes never appeard. Photoshop ran just fine and ALL my filters, preset tools etc. were untouched! BUT.. when I pulled down the HELP menu the options to Register, Activate, Deactivate or Check for Updates were grayed out!

Another call to Adobe.. 3 techs later, I'm tolled I need to download the CS3Clean script and run it (Termianl mode!!! argh) twice. This time a check of my Applications folder shows everything removed! So the DVD is churning while the second CS3 install of the day is in progress.

BTW... the "nice" lady at Adobe registrations (first call) told me they were going to "make an exception" and reset my activation count... Nice of them. Especially since I am such an exceptional person. LOL

You mean to tell me that even MACs need to be recovered from image (snicker; snicker). Laughing with you not at you Dee Dee. Just the other day, I had to recover from image since my AVG 8 upgrade went sour. Unless your image includes a deactivated version of Adobe, it's still hard for me to understand how this happened, but I can see how confusing it would be. Makes me want to make another backup image of my PC (wasn't planning on doing so for another couple of weeks; was going to do so before SP3, but decided to be brave (would only have lost a week; not data of course, just a few junk programs that I got from Give Away of the Day that I probably don't need anyway; lol). Good that Adobe took care of you; trust me; other software vendors would not. Kudos to Adobe on this one. :)

Extra info: When I had to re-install my whole OS when my brother got me a new PC, CS2 re-installed without a hitch; could have even got another 2 free issues of the Photo-shop magazine, but decided I was too honest to do so (not currently a NAPP member mainly since I'm a broke bloke still saving up for a car, but also mainly a GIMP user anyway). :)

It's such a chore to have to reinstall a program as extensive as CS3. I even lost my sites and remote connection information for Dreamweaver. Will have to rebuild all my print prefs for different printers and papers in InDesign. I haven't even started on reinstalling tools, brushes, patterns, styles actions etc. in Photoshop...sigh.