Resolved Windows 7 upgrade disabled Adobe CS3 package

While Windows 7 Advisor confirmed the Windows Vista to Windows 7 upgrade has everything fine, the upgrade proceeded. But after the upgrade, Adobe Master Collection CS3 failed to start and require license key activiation again. With the ligitimate and original license key, Adobe Master Collection CS3 still rejected the license key.

I called Adobe hotline and their customer service consultant told me to un-install and re-install the Adobe package from the Windows 7 upgraded computer. After un-installation, Adobe Master Collection CS3 failed to install. Then Adobe customer service considered the case closed! I re-opened the case the they re-close the case, but at the same time open a technical service case for installation failure but with charge.

Even worse, before the Windows 7 upgrade, the harddisk was cloned and use the newly cloned harddisk to do the Windows 7 upgrade. It looks safe, but not. When I put the original harddisk (with Windows Vista) back to the computer, the Adobe Master Collection CS3 (of course it includes the Photoshop, Dreamweaver and etc.) was disabled and asked for activation.

In this case, Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor failed to warn me the Adobe problem and Adobe seemed to take advantage of Windows 7 upgrade attempt to charge existing customer for unreasonable technical support fee.

It happened in Australia, but Adobe customer support was in UK and technical support seems to be in India. Whenever the cost centre (Customer support) makes a mistake (intentional or uninstentional), they refer the customer to their revenue centre (Technical Support in India). This is a really bad business model.

My past experience with Norton was that the Technical Support charged me on Credit Card, gave an random solution that did not work and did not response further (also in India) when I told them that the solution did not work at all. So, I don't want to repeat it again.

Any advice?

 

Hello Ivan

What version on Windows 7 are you running and is it 64bit or 32bit?

Also which antivirus are you running.

There seems to be an issue between CS3 and Windows 7 there is some workarounds for it.

I will await your reply and we can have a look to see if we can sort it.

Tom

 

Thank you Tom for your passionate help.

HP dv6-1244TX ran on Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit and was upgraded to Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit through HP original Windows Upgrade Option. During re-installation, the Norton 360 version 3 was disabled. One point to note was that I had checked Adobe website that confirming Adobe CS3 compatibility with Windows 7.

Regarding the experience about Norton technical support abused their charges, VISA card company had refunded because I had all the written dialogue as evidence and Norton could not present any evidence about what service they had provided after charging me.

This incident should have alarmed all of us because it shows that proper backup does not guarantee recovery. The software activation problem might have imposed big uncertainty to the usability of disaster recovery plan, especially to those small to medium sized companies not eligible / practical in acquiring corporate / enterprise level licenses?

 

Hi Ivan,
There are questions to pose about this problem.
Did you de-activate the CS3 before doing the 7 upgrade?
How did the re-installation fail? Any warnings? Were you installing to the default folders?
Did you try running the .exe file on the DVD as administrator?
This is probably a problem with your machine set-up rather than with the Adobe software, because with the original HD re-installed CS3 should not have required the licence key to be re-installed.

Roger

 

Right Ivan the first thing todo is to turn off UAC (User Account Control)

Goto this website and follow method 1. Disable UAC Windows 7

You must restart after this step.

Once restarted disable Norton 360.

Run setup directly from the Adobe CS3 disk by right clicking an running as administrator.

Let us know how you get on.

Tom

 

Hi Roger and Tom,

Thanks for input from you guys. Your questions and suggestions are critical. So far the turning off UAC is the one that I might not have done before the re-installation.

There is no chance to de-activate CS3 before un-installation because after upgrading from Vista to Windows 7, none of the CS3 component products (i.e. Photoshop) could be run. And I did not see any warning from www.adobe.com or Microsoft Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor warning me to de-activate CS3 before the upgrade. (It did suggested de-installation of Catalyst and iTunes and etc. before Windows 7 upgrade.)

I'll try the UAC method, hopefully tomorrow. Then update this thread for you guys info. Thanks.