Red,
How you’d have done this I don’t know, but in uninstalling PS CS, you can do so without deleting the activation data, so the process shouldn’t be anything more than just a bit time consuming. If anything goes awry such that reactivation is prompted, you should be able to reactivate easily over the inernet…"should be" being a key phrase.
If the paths of installation on F and D are similar, I’m betting there’s not much you’d need to worry about and you may be able to simply delete the F drive installation path. Common files and preferences are all on the system drive (C usually), so what resides on F is most likely just what is unique to the Photoshop CS installation folder. Since there is obviously a duplicate of that on the D drive, and since the latter is what is associated with your add/remove dialog, then it sounds as though the F drive installation isn’t even being used.
Before you do anything, one idea is to launch REGEDIT from the RUN command line, then simply search on a text string that is the same as the installation path of Photoshop CS on your F drive. If no entries are found, then it is probably safe to delete that F drive path without concern, and you’re done. If there is an entry in the Windows Registry for the F drive installation, then you need to perform a series of unintalls and reinstalls that more cleanly remove extraneous information. In this case, I suggest the following approach:
1) Uninstall PS CS via the existing add/remove entry so as to delete the D drive installation. Do NOT perform the Advanced Uninstall, since you want to leave your activation data on the computer. Also, do not remove your current preferences or any shared files.
2) Install PS CS to the path on your F drive. If you are told that an installation already exists there, then rename the folder where that installation resides and perform the installation to a different folder at the same level on your F drive. For example, if the old installation is F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS, then rename it to F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS Old, and then peform the new installation to F:\Adobe\Photoshop. Upon completion, and if you had to create a 2nd installation path, move all content of the 2nd path into the folder of the renamed path. That is, move all of F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS into F:\Adobe\Photshop CS Old, allowing all content to be overwritten. When this is complete, delete to trash the now empty 2nd installation path’s folder…delete F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS. Finally, rename the original path to the name of the deleted folder…rename F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS Old to F:\Adobe\Photoshop CS.
3) Again perform an uninstall via Add/Remove, which should now be performed upon the F drive installation. As before, do not peform the Advanced Uninstall, and do not remove shared files or preferences.
4) Finally, reinstall Photoshop CS back to the D drive where you preferred it to reside, and you should be back in business with all installation information in the registry, Add/Remove panel, etc., properly pointing to the D drive installation.
Hope that helps,
Daryl
thanks a lot Daryl for your time, I will surely try this up and let you know what happened.
Thanks again
ReD
I forgot no note that the one in my F drive has no folder. I mean that all the adobe files and .dll are all over the F not like the on in D drive, it has a folder wherein all are inside… mixed up with other progs. Also if I do the series of install un-install, would it affect the settings of my adobe? (brushes and stuff)
I am thinking if, the consequences would be more severe than just leaving it there, I might just let it stay.
Thank you again Daryl
ReD,
Those folders that are "mixed up with other progs"…well, that’s called organization. 🙂 Not to sound trite, but I can’t imagine any good reason for installing an application directly at the root level of a drive as you describe has happened for your F drive. It would definitely be good practice to organize programs, data, etc.. within folders so that you can better manage your computer.
I’m going to play a hunch here and guess that perhaps you’ve done something in the past similar to what I’ve done, and then forgot to clean things up later. There have been times when I’ve been uninstalled applications yet actually keep the application’s root installation files intact. I know that sounds crazy, but one reason in the past was when I ran a dual-boot system where an application would be installed twice to a common location, yet once from each O/S. By copying the root installation folder to a backup area and then running the uninstaller for it for one O/S, I could then restore the copied files to their original location so as to have them present to support a 2nd uinstall from the other O/S. I’ve done this for other reasons also, but those reasons escape me at teh moment.
In any case, my point is that perhaps you (or someone else?) for some reason in the past wanted to make a copy of the Photoshop root installation folder and just dragged the contents off to the F drive. Then, time passed and you forgot to delete them. Now, you’ve got a "dirty" drive with seemingly unneeded files.
At a minimum, I suggest you simply delete all the files on the F drive if you can readily identify that they are all part of the Photoshop installation. I have a feeling these files weren’t placed there by a normal instllation, as doing so at the root level is very unlikely unless you deliberately changed it to F.
Or, after completing step (1) go ahead and perform what I described in (2) above and define the installation path as F. I don’t know what governs the installer identifying that you are trying to overwite an existing PS installation, but it may simply be the presence of the photshop.exe file. If so, just rename that file to photoshop.old and then perform the installation to F. Hopefully that will work and then you can perform the uninstall of step (3) to clean everything off. The photoshop.old file would be left behind for you to manually delete. With that complete, perform the last step (4) of installing PS to the desired path on your D drive.
You can make backup copies of your preferences so there’s no worry about losing them, but the uninstaller should provide the option to leave them in place if I remember right. Certainly making your own backup copy ensures a margin of safety against losing anything.
Regards,
Daryl
🙂 Though I havent followed much of you instruction, your idea was very very good. I was able to fix thing up only by Un-installing via add/remove (it actually took of the one on F) then reinstalled to D:
The very premise of your idea 🙂
and thats it 🙂 I checked my F, its quite clean.
Thanks for the help Daryl, really appreciate it
ReD
and oh, no more root install e 🙂
Glad to see all is well ReD.
