CS2: System Clock and Activation

Y
Posted By
YrbkMgr
May 30, 2005
Views
541
Replies
11
Status
Closed
I have a utility that automatically adjusts the system clock after connecting to the World Time Server, on windows boot. Will there be an issue of any kind with this utility and Photoshop CS2 activation?

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BL
Bob Levine
May 30, 2005
There shouldn’t be. After all, WinXP connects to servers to ajust time by default and I haven’t seen that happen.

But like all things, YMMV.

Bob
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
May 30, 2005
Hi Tony,

From what I’ve seen with PS CS2’s activation scheme, reactivation is not likely to be affected at all by system clock changes. While I didn’t reboot my system (and don’t think that would’ve mattered), I just ran a test where I rolled the clock back to 2000, up to 2010, and returned it to 2005, launching PS CS2 and closing it for each setting. There was no problem observed. Unlike PS CS, PS CS2 does not update any of the activation records with each launch & close action. As long as the original hard drive to which it was activated is intact, along with the boot sector activation hash and product license DAT file, you should never see a reactivation become necessary…unless the process simply fails for unexplained reasons as has been known to happen with PS CS on occasion.

Regards,

Daryl
Y
YrbkMgr
May 30, 2005
WinXP connects to servers to ajust time by default

Now that I didn’t know – have to check into it Bob. Got a link per chance? That’d be one less utility taking up overhead so that’d be the tip of the week for me. Thanks.

Daryl,

There was no problem observed.

Outstanding. Thanks for verifying it.

Unlike PS CS, PS CS2 does not update any of the activation records with each launch & close action.

Ah – so that might explain why there why there’s yet to be an activation patch; maybe it’s a complete re-write and isn’t worth it. Just speculating.

Has anyone tried De-Activation yet? Is it reasonably uneventful?

Thanks a ton for the info so far.

Peace,
Tony
MM
Mick_Murphy
May 30, 2005
I wouldn’t worry too much about the XP time synchronisation. It does it by default once a week and I doubt that anybody has ever noticed it happening. You can do it manually if you want or not at all.

From what I can see CS2 activation is a lot more robust than CS1. I just restored a partition a few days ago using Norton Ghost and there was no need to reactivate. CS always required reactivation if it had been started up since the backup up had been made. I’ve not tried deactivation – my CS2 is running perfectly and I’m not intending to do anything that might upset it – but rumour has it that it works as it is supposed to do.
Y
YrbkMgr
May 30, 2005
Hmmm… Thanks Mick. More good information.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the XP time synchronisation.

Fact is, I didn’t know about XP time synchronization so I wasn’t concerned about it. I have a utility that synchs with the world time server. Had I known that XP does it anway, #1, it makes the question moot, and #2, I’ll dump the utility I have taking up ram overhead.

In regards to deactivation, I have to test run CS2 so that implementation doesn’t negatively affect worflow during the first learning curve. I just want to know that if I install it on a temporary machine, that I can deactivate it and reinstall it on the main unit without any hassles.

I’m not anticipaing a problem, but was just hoping someone would have tried it.

Peace,
Tony
MM
Mick_Murphy
May 30, 2005
Tony
There have certainly been posts here about deactivation working properly. In any case, you’ll be able to activate on two machines so setting up a test machine shouldn’t be a problem.

It seems to me that, aside from a few problems related to the activation server being down in the first week of CS2 release, there has been remarkably little on the forum about activation suggesting that things are a lot more smooth and problem free than with CS. The biggest problem with CS2, judging by the forum, is with certain video cards.
Y
YrbkMgr
May 30, 2005
Mick,

There have certainly been posts here about deactivation working properly.

Good to know. I’ve been real spotty in forum visits lately.

In any case, you’ll be able to activate on two machines so setting up a test machine shouldn’t be a problem.

I know, but if I decide to install it on a second unit it wouldn’t be one with which I’ll be testing so I wouldn’t want to "waste" the second activation.

In any event, seems like a green light so far. Thanks.

Peace,
Tony
S
scb
May 30, 2005
I wouldn’t worry too much about the XP time synchronisation. It does it by default once a week and I doubt that anybody has ever noticed it happening.

In Win XP Home you have to go to Date and Time Properties and click on the Internet Time tab and be sure the little box to connect automatically to the internet time server is ticked. I’m not sure what the default is. I understand – but have not verified – that for other versions of Win the process may be different, but I don’t know in what way exactly. This link may be helpfu:

<http://tf.nist.gov/service/pdf/win2000xp.pdf>

scb
BL
Bob Levine
May 30, 2005
Tony,

You won’t be wasting activations since you easily deactivate either machine. IIRC, you were the first to bring this up when CS1 was released.

I can tell you that having gone through months of testing with InDesign that it works as advertised.

Bob
DP
Daryl_Pritchard
May 30, 2005
Tony,

I’ve exhaustively tested activation and reactivation for various system configurations of interest to me and all worked fine unless the hard drive itself was cloned to another, in which case the latter required activation to be performed again, as a 2nd activation. That shouldn’t be the case so long if the drive is used in the same system, which is the only real flaw I’ve found in PS CS2’s license mangement scheme at present…it is not a system activation, but rather a hard drive activation. For the majority of users, that should never be a problem, but for those who may need to swap out hard drives on a single system, the only way to do so without incident is to perform a Transfer Activation each time. That should not be required at all if the same system is always being used, and it represents a major problem since an internet connection must be utilized to transfer activation. The only time Transfer Activation should be a required process is if a hard drive is moved from one computer to another (TA is not presently needed if the 2nd PC can be successfully booted from the same hard drive) or if PS CS2 is installed separately to another computer’s hard drive.

Why swap hard drives on the same system? Security for one example. Using one PC to support both classified and unclassified processing, classified use requires standalone, non-networked operation (hence no internet access) and the most cost-effective way to do that is by swapping hard drives. So, as far as I’m concerned, Adobe still has some work to do in providing a true system activation that will support such activities, but fortunately this is a condition that hopefully few users will experience. Overall, activation in PS CS2 is much easier to use and is highly tolerant of system configuration changes.

Regards,

Daryl
Y
YrbkMgr
May 30, 2005
Thanks for the input guys. And a special thank you to Daryl, who is, as always, thorough.

Robert,

You won’t be wasting activations since you easily deactivate either machine.

Right – my question was designed to discover whether there were any issues with deactivation. For if there were, I was fearful of wasting an activation event. Apparently there are not, thus I will not <grin>.

This is all good news. Now I can go through CS2 testing and slipstream implementation without compromising workflow.

<heel kick>

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