Since the Adobe installation CDs are all mass produced it does not seem likely your installation disk is lacking any particular file: something is preventing it from installing properly. It would not hurt to clean the disk prior to the next round of installation.
Uninstall all copies of Photoshop. You do not have to reinstall WinXP (in fact it rarely pays to reinstall XP despite what the computer magazines say).
Manually delete any remaining references to Photoshop on your hard drive, including entries under Program Files and any remaining Photoshop files in the Windows directory and subfolders. Unistall routines often leave distressing amounts of material behind.
Make sure you have a valid system restore point or back up your registry in case something goes wrong with the next step.
FIre up regedit and manually scan for references to Adobe Photoshop and delete these. Sometimes an incorrect registry entry may persist despite going through the canned uninstall routine.
Reboot your computer.
Turn off all background programs. In particular turn off your antivirus program, firewall, spyware scanner etc that examines incoming files. One of these may be preventing the needed dll from installing and registering. Norton antivirus is a notorious problem in this regard for many installation routines such that many programs now explicitly warn you to turn off antivirus programs prior to install.. If you have the WinXP firewall turned on go into Control Panel and turn it off too. If everything installs and works properly don’t forget to turn these back on.
If you are paranoid about such things and have a constant on connection,
e.g. DSL, disconnect from the network while antivirus and firewall are
turned off.
Reinstall CS2. If CS2 is an upgrade it only has to see your install disk for CS in the CD rom drive, you do not have to install CS first unless you want to. You may want to install CS2 to a completely new location, it does not have to be in Program FIles, in order to create entirely new references in the registry to file locations than prior installations. If the problem persists and the warning box tells you which file is missing or corrupted you can try to scan your installation disk for that particular file and manually reinstall it to the correct directory. If this does not work you will have to call Adobe. Maybe you do have a defective installation CD.
Try this…
Once you click or double click on the icon to load Photoshop CS2 quickly and I mean quickly press and hold the Control + Shift + Alt key and then answer yes when Photoshop asks if you want to reset the preference file. See if this doesn’t fix the problem. I had some problems with Bridge and this corrected it.
Good luck,
Robert
tried, no go. it gets to the same point where it load all the plugins and prefs and then after it looks like it’s done…the error window pops up still. 🙁
You mean like the pictures I posted? Damn, this sucks.
tried, no go.
Do you mean you didn’t get the dialogue box asking if you wanted to reset the prefs?
The sure way is to navigate to the corrupt preferences file using Windows Explorer and delete it from there. Once this is done photoshop should load and it will build a new prefs file.
Read the FAQs if you’re not sure where to find the file.
Chris.
I got the dialog to kill my prefs, that wasn’t it. What I am getting when I run CS2 is a error message saying "Failed to initialize library file, please reinstall"
When I try to run Adobe Bridge it tells me "there was a problem with your licencing, please run at least one Adobe application first".
Which I HAD done, when everything was working. So why does Bridge not work? I can also run Image Ready just fine, which is an Adobe application yet Bridge still won’t work….this is so odd.
do you (or did you ever) have the suite kevin? or is it a standalone version of ps?
I own the Adobe video Collection and paid for the downloadable CS2 update.
However I don’t have ANY of the Adobe Video Collection installed at the moment, as this is a fresh install of Windows XP Pro, SP2.
I just installed CS2 and inserted my CS CD when it asked for it.
I think I narrowed it down. I launched CS2 while in Safe Mode and this time I got an ACTICATION ERROR style message.
I think the library that is failing is related to Activation. I knew this would bite me in the arse one day. Anyway….
How do I get CS2 to ask me for my activation again? I realised in all the reinstalls it has never asked me to activate since that first time.
When you uninstalled CS it used to ask you if you wanted to deactivate, CS2 has never asked this of me.
Was your original CS a stand alone program or did it come as part of a suit?
As far as I am aware, you cannot upgrade individual programs which were part of a suite, only the suite as a whole.
Chris.
If that were the issue, the install never would started.
Under the help menu, there should be an activation choice.
Bob
I understand there’s a DEactivate in cs2, haven’t seen it yet, but might be worth looking for. deactivate then reactivate.
understand there’s a DEactivate in cs2
It’s called "Transfer Activation" and is present in the Help menu of the individual applications making up the suite. Transferring activation for one application disables ALL of the remaining applications making up the suite. You also get a warning to indicate this will happen.
what about in the standalone?
The point products all have a transfer activation command, also. But they won’t affect any other products.
Bob
I don’t have any of my Adobe Video Collection Suite installed right now. Just CS2. All CS2 did was ask me for my CS CD, then it installed.
I can’t deactivate CS2 as it won’t let me in to the program.
I can’t try to deactivate vua Adobe Bridge cause it won’t run cause it says there is an issue with licencing.
Image Ready runs, but there is no "transfer activation" option any where.
???
how about in the installer? is there an option there for deactivation?
I don’t think your issue is activation related, but…
I can’t deactivate CS2 as it won’t let me in to the program.
Go to Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Adobe Systems/Product Licenses and move the file named B2B86000 to another folder or your desktop. Try restarting CS2. If the problem was activation you will be prompted to reactivate.
I don’t think your issue is activation related, but…
I guess you would know better than me, but have you ever run across the error he’s seeing?:
"there was a problem with your licencing, please run at least one Adobe application first".
I don’t want to re-read this whole thread. Has anyone suggesting creating a new user account?
Bob
Yes, it means that Bridge thinks that Photoshop hasn’t been activated. Bob’s point about new user account is worth a try. I think there’s an issue with the CS2 installer on some systems that screws things up.
Bob’s point about new user account is worth a try.
I agree, but I think this guy formatted and reinstalled windows and nothing else but cs2. I may be confusing him with another poster though.
I think there’s an issue with the CS2 installer on some systems that screws things up.
is that the msi package problem chris has alluded to a couple times?
Tried that (moving my activation file out), still getting the same "library initialization’ error, crap.
Well, Adobe’s phone support will be online tomorrow, I guess I can call in and keep fingers crossed. :\
Most likely you have a bad install – which could be due to anti-virus software (although there is also a known issue with English versions running on Danish OSes).
You’ve likely copied plug-ins from an older Photoshop version into the Photoshop CS2 plug-ins folder or targeted your previous plug-ins folder as an additional plug-ins folder in CS2. See this tech doc:
<
http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/328880.html>
It’s my hard drive RAID setup causing the issue it turns out. Adobe is sending me files to resolve the matter.
