Yet another reason to love activation.
Boy, oh boy… Am I glad that old machine is a print server now.. 😉
One less reason to hook up printers directly to my production machine…
Keith
Are you sure it’s printer? Do you have any software running that might be changing system settings?
Bob
Dennis,
It won’t lock you out. A re-activation doesn’t count towards your number of installs.
A re-activation will be asked for if you use a System restore utility. Just changing a printer shouldn’t trigger it.
You mentioned a system restore. I had used GoBack a couple of times during this period. Does GoBack eliminate something that CS needs?
It’s entirely possible that this is the cause. Are you going back to a point before activation?
Bob
I’ve set my WinXP back to an earlier state with Drive Image 7 a couple of times since I installed Photoshop CS and both times I had to re-activate it. I too am curious to know when it refuses to re-activate.
—
Regards
Madsen.
As long as the system remains pretty much the same, it won’t refuse to re-activate. You can do it ten times a day and it should be fine.
Bob
"Should" being the key word, as System Restore seems to defeat activation for some odd reason. Perhaps not even all the time, but yet enough to be a nuisance. As for restoring drive images using Drive Image, they too may or may not require reactivation…I’ve seen both situations. The worst case I’ve seen yet was where restoring an image where PSCS had been activated failed to reactivate when I was prompted to do so, and I had to contact Adobe for personal support. That support was readily provided once I called within normal business hours but was unavailable at the time this incident occurred. There are problems in the PS CS re/activation process and 24-hour/day personal support should be provided until a dot release corrects them. More often than not, reactivation seems to go without a hitch, but it simply should not be required at all if a system’s hardware configuration has not changed, the hard drive has not been low-level formatted, the system clock has not been tampered with, and the Windows registry has not been corrupted.
Daryl
Since loading CS I’ve installed fresh hardware, played around with my USB’s and tried a second monitor set-up with no resquests to re-activate. All working smoothly.
I think this all goes down to running a healthy system in the first place.
Like I’ve said before, so long as the licence caters for common sense and it defeats piracy I’m all for activating as many times as necessary during the life of a product. Adobe’s CS 2-system home licence is very fair. Norton’s 1-system-only licence by contrast, is not. That said, CS costs 13 times more than Norton Internet Security doesn’t it 😉
Dennis,
Does GoBack eliminate something that CS needs?<<
Yes. Stephanie Schaefer has addressed this point previously.Apparently PS CS keeps count of the number of times it is started and following a system restore the counts will not match and a reactivation is called for.
Thanks Bob.
That’s nice to know.
—
Regards
Madsen.
LenHewitt – 01:23am Feb 9, 2004 Pacific (#11 of 12)
Dennis,
Does GoBack eliminate something that CS needs?<<
Yes. Stephanie Schaefer has addressed this point previously.Apparently PS CS keeps count of the number of times it is started and following a system restore the counts will not match and a reactivation is called for. —–
Hmm… keeping track of the number of times it is started? Now why on earth would it need to do that? And require a call home if the numbers don’t agree? I never heard this mentioned before… and to think that some people were called Chicken Little’s for saying activation was taking us down the slippery slope to things like, oh… subscription-ware!
It is inevitable. There are only so many functions you really need in a piece of software like Photoshop. Eventually you’ll run out of useful things to implement (I think we’re almost pretty much there already), and then the only way to keep up the revenue stream (because people don’t feel the upgrades are worthy) would be to charge per use. Keep your version 7’s handy!
I think she said somehthing about the last time/date of use, not number of times used len… don’t recall specifically though.
It’s not a two system home license.
The EULA allows you to install on two machines as long as only one is used at a time. If you have both running at the same time you are violating the license.
Bob
Thank all of you for your answers. It clears the problem up. I have noticed that PSCS seems to take longer to fully load then earlier versions did. Now I think it is because of status checks it is running for the product activation. In my opinion this is a flaw in the activation software. I do not have any problem with product activation on PSCS, but it should not work in this manner. I also have Norton NIS2004 and it also has a product activation feature but has never forced a re-activation after a restore point. In general I understand why vendors are doing this but when it comes time for me to replace my computer I am not looking forward to all of the reactivations I may have to go thru.
Now I think it is because of status checks it is running for the product activation.
I don’t think so. But I could be wrong.
Dave,
I think she said somehthing about the last time/date of use, not number of
times used <<
Could be……and I couldn’t locate the actual message on a forum search….
I’ve had some problems with intermittent "can’t find the activation Files" messages. Photoshop lives on my primary machine a two year old Dell 530. No supercomputer in this point but a good, stable platform. Adobe Tech Support seems very worried about the time needed to read the activation files. I’ve tried a wide variety of things that they suggested including removing fire walls, defraging,
low level formats, swapping disks (the drive in question is a 10K rpm SCSI 160) etc. The problem still occurs sporadically with no discernable pattern.
If you think timing, defraging the drive might help or perhaps the new printer driver creating some additional cpu overhead.
Hope this helps.
It has been this way since installation so it is not due to any added hardware as the printer is the only new device and that was added a month after intalling the software. I keep my system in decent shape with defrags, antivirus and spyware tools so that should not be the culprit. I do have a firewall though and I have seen other programs that always access the internet when loaded, so this product activation maybe accessing the internet and that is what slows it down.
Len,
Could be……and I couldn’t locate the actual message on a forum search….
I looked for her post, too, and couldn’t find it. If we’re thinking of the same one, I seem to recall her saying that if you create a drive image and then open PS CS after you create that image, you’ll need to reactivate if you restore that image to your hard drive.
So, if I’m understanding it correctly: Let’s say that you’ve opened PS CS 100 times since installing it. PS CS keeps track of that number in the boot sector, or wherever its secret hideout is. You create a drive image and go on about your business, opening PS CS, let’s say another 50 times. Then, for whatever reason, you need to restore the image to your drive (which says that you’ve opened PS CS 100 times). The two numbers don’t match. Bingo, you need to reactivate.
I think she said somehthing about the last time/date of use, not number
of times used <<
That would be correct!
Could be……and I couldn’t locate the actual message on a forum search….
Consider yourself reprimanded for scaring the wits out of innocent bystanders 😉
Thanks for the clarification, Ian. The part that I was remembering, pertaining to restoring an "image" of your drive (as opposed to a system restore point), is where Stephanie said:
"Restoring from an image will require a reactivation if Photoshop has been launched after the image is created. The only scenario that I can think of that *might* work would be imaging the drive + boot sector, which apparently can be a bit tricky – big might though as I haven’t tried it."
Well, that thread was an interesting read…the one where Stephanie’s commments are referenced. Somehow I either missed it or forgot about it, but it does perhaps explain, at least a little, about why PS CS may sometimes require reactivation following restoration of a drive image and other times not: It may simply depend upon whether or not I’ve launched PS CS any on the system subsequent to when the drive image was first created. While I don’t recall ever selecting any option to either save or restore a master boot record when using Drive Image, I do agree that restoring the MBR should prevent seeing the reactivation prompt. But, I don’t like reading how the activation key is updated each time PS CS is launched. To what extent that is necessary if the activation process is to be more "tamper-resistant", I don’t know. But, my opinion is that when PS CS is activated, all records of that activation should be generated once and once only, never to be updated. That way, the problems associated with System Restore or drive image restorations should go away I believe.
This doesn’t explain away my recent difficulty with my laptop, where restoration of a drive image resulted in not only reactivation being required, but also that it was in turn denied. In that scenario, I had created a drive image, saved it to a secondary partition, reinstalled an old image in trying to isolate a problem, then restored the original image upon deciding the old image wasn’t as useful as I thought. Throughout this process, PS CS wasn’t launched at all, so that leaves me puzzled as to why the denied activation arose.
Thinking through the scenario, one idea comes to mind…the older drive image from 2002 was created with an older version of Drive Image whereas the current 2004 image was created with Drive Image 7. Although both images were restored with DI7, if the older image somehow updated the MBR but this didn’t occur when restoring the current image, then there may well have been a conflict. That is, the 2004 image restoration may have reinstalled any registry and "miscellaneous location" entries of the activation keys, yet the hidden hard drive sector might not have shown any activation hash at all and thus perhaps appeared to be a new hard drive.
If what I conjecture sounds plausible, then it sounds as if the hard drive is one required piece of the activation puzzle, without which the user will be prompted to reactivate. If true, then I offer that is a serious flaw in the activation process. The need for reactivation should always be based upon some sort of truth model where, for example, 4 of 7 hardware IDs must be intact relative to those detected when PS CS was first activated. Of course, if those hardware items are subject to changing periodically, then I can also see why it may be necessary to update the activation key each time PS CS is launched. An update of the key may be needed so that, at any given time, all "7" of those hardware IDs are known for the truth model….and now we’re back to the original problem of dynamic activation keys.
As an aside to all this…has anyone had experience with running PS CS where it is installed and activated on each of multiple, removable hard drives that are all used with the same PC? I’d expect to see activation being required initially for each of the hard drives, since each would be seen as a fresh install, yet the activation count should not be increased since all other hardware items are unchanged. But, once installed, there should never be any prompt for a required reactivation when the drives are swapped out.
Heck, let’s even put another spin on it…1 fixed drive has PS CS installed on it while the system drive is swappable between a Win2K and a WinXP drive, each of which the PS CS installation was performed on so that all registry entries, system files, and common files are properly in place. I assume the hard drive hash is written on the drive to which PS CS is installed, but obviously the registry entry and, quite likely, the other activation record are both written to the system drive. So, in swapping system drives, 2 of 3 activation records are switched out for possibly different ones. Is that again going to force a required reactivation? If so, there is again a problem in the activation scheme.
This last scenario is presented with the idea in mind of using PS CS on a system where swappable hard drives may be required in order to use the same system across multiple levels of security classification. Such systems typically would not be connected to a public domain where internet access is available, thus reactivation via a phone call might be the only option. However, that would be a huge nuisance if it was a recurring event. Perhaps it is such cases as these where Adobe would have to freely issue some sort of corporate level key that doesn’t require activation. I don’t know if they have such a key or not, but surely so. I also add that it should be "freely" provided because apart from being a uniquely configured PC, it is still one and the same system apart from a hard drive that gets routinely swapped out. You can’t go out and charge more for something merely because a customer is using their PC in a manner that wasn’t anticipated. Whether Adobe would or not, I’ve no idea.
Regards,
Daryl
I was looking through FAQs and found this topic, so here goes: I just installed PS CS on a Win XP machine on my network. During installation I was signed on with admin rights and activated the product. Now when a "regular" user attempts to use the product it tells him that he doesn’t have the rights to activate and terminates the program. I’ve already assigned full permissions to the Adobe folder in Program files and even Adobe keys in the registry (have experienced same with other programs), but still get the error. Anybody know whats up with this?
Thanks.
But, my opinion is that when PS CS is activated, all records of that activation should be generated once and once only, never to be updated.
I agree completely. Activation should NOT by any means require you to keep active processes running whenever you run the app and "update itself" with every use. Talk about onerous!
Ditto. I’ve had to re-activate three times now, all because I can’t get PS CS to run as well as PS 7 did on the same machine. It’s gettin’ old. That machine is purposely not connected to the internet, so it’s back to the phone each time. If anybody needs the number, I have it memorized.
Joel,
Adobe suggest that Power User is the minimum permissions required to run Photoshop
Thanks Len,
I agree too, I’ve not been impressed with Adobe’s activation processes.
Adobe’s reactivation system is an embarrassment to the company!
I did a system restore today on my DELL and Photoshop demanded that I reactivate their software [I restored to yesterdays settings]. I installed CS a few months ago.
I tried to do the activation, only to be told that the "activation system is not available at this time". We’re presently overseas, so cannot call the US phone activation system. I tried the Japanese number they offered only to be told that the activation number given was too long… ?#!@?>!@@#!@@
So thanks to Adobes "innovative activation system" Im stuck and cannot complete a VERY urgent design job for a VERY important customer in the UK
.!!!
Well done Adobe!!!
If anyone from Adobe reads post #31, please consider providing a patch that will make your products compatible with the Windows XP "Restore" application.
Having To reactivate Photoshop whenever one does a simple system restore is a big waste of your customer’s time and can lead to the unfortunate predicament I described above.
Genkitony,
Your experience is not uncommon, and fortunately it has been mentioned enough that the Adobe reps who visit the forum have expressed that they are looking into this and similar problems. What will be done or when remains yet to be seen.
Regards,
Daryl
So, while System Restore seems simple from a user standpoint, what it does to a system isn’t simple.
Note that the internet activation servers should be available just about all the time. I’m surprised that re-activation didn’t just work. The workaround for the issue is, rather than doing System Restore, use Ghost with the boot sector option to keep working images. Yes, not the same. The local call centers for phone-based re-activation should be up and running in most places.
Unfortunately, with what’s involved, there is no short-term fix for this issue. And no, I’m not happy about that either.
-Scott
Unfortunately, with what’s involved, there is no short-term fix for this issue.
Just remove it! 🙂
No doubt there are flaws in this idea, and I suppose enough such that it might not be as effective in curtailing piracy, but…I wonder if users would be willing to put up with a required registration in exchange for disabled activation? As we all know, the benefit of registering your PS license is that you can get help from Adobe in replacing lost CDs, migrating a license, etc. So, rather than have groups such as Paradox provide a crack for the activation scheme, perhaps Adobe could provide a download to registered PS users of an "Activation Disable Utility". That is, if you’re a registered PS user, you never have to face any activation/reactivation hurdles again for the software. Then, just as usage of past versions has simply relied upon the integrity of the user to abide by the EULA, the same would remain true with regard to limiting your installation of PS to two machines.
Now that would be a very fast and simple fix! 🙂
Daryl
you go daryl! that’s a hell of an idea. Tie it somehow to the individual app as well so it couldn’t be passed around the net after download.
