Installation with Autoplay Failed

S
Posted By
Sforzando
May 6, 2007
Views
313
Replies
5
Status
Closed
Hi,
I bought Photoshop CS2 last year and have been using it fine. My hard drive became full lately, so I got an external hard drive and have started to move a lot of things into it, including programs. I went into the program files in my system C hard drive, cut the PS file and pasted it into my external F drive. I went into PS from my F drive and it worked fine. Then I went into my "add/remove programs" in my control panel, saw that PS was still there with more than 200MB, so I uninstalled it. From there, everything went wrong. When I went into PS from my F drive again, it loaded up but then said "Your Adobe Photoshop username, organization or serial number is missing or invalid. The application cannot continue and must now exit." Then you have to click ok and it exits.

So I think, ok, I’ll just reinstall. I have my receipt, my original box, the manual, the tutorial CD, an advertisement for "Classroom in a Box" and of course my installation disc- basically, I’ve saved everything. I put in the installation disc, the autoplay begins with the logo animation, it asks me for a language, I choose "North American English," and then, when I click to continue, I get this message: "Autoplay has encountered a problem and needs to close." Then it closes and I can’t install.

I’ve tried right clicking on the disc icon in "my computer" and then going to "explore." When I then click the setup in there, the same autoplay error happens. I see a .exe.manifest, but I can’t read it. I also see a folder that says Photoshop there, and in the folder an install wizard- but when go through the wizard, I get this message: "The wizard was interrupted before Adobe Photoshop CS2 could be completely installed. Your system has not been modified. To complete installation at another time, please run setup again."

I’ve restarted many times and nothing works. Please, help! I want my Photoshop back!

Thanks,
Sally

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JJ
John Joslin
May 6, 2007
Moving the "PS file" to the external drive was probably just moving the short-cut to the exe file on your C drive. PS (and a lot of other programs) always work best from the C drive and install there. If you did move the whole PS program folder then that still isn’t enough and, as you saw, it will invalidate the activation.

It is possible during installation to specify another drive but you can’t simply drag things across – there’s a lot more than the exe file involved. External drives are particularly dodgy in this respect.

What you now have is a bit of a mess. Basically what needs to be done is to manually remove all traces of Photoshop which the uninstall procedure could not. This includes removing Registry entries which is not advisable unless you know what you are doing.

Even this may not work and your best recourse may be to wipe the C drive and re-install everything starting with Windows.

Remember to use your external drive for data and keep the programs on the System drive where possible. you don’t mention the size of your hard drive – maybe you should invest in a bigger one.
S
Sforzando
May 6, 2007
A full system restore? Ugh. But if that’s what I’ll have to do, ok. Thanks a lot- I appreciate your help.
JJ
John Joslin
May 6, 2007
Obviously you should try everything else first, but a fresh install of Windows and applications should act like a revitalisation for any system over 2 years old.

Be aware that Windows will have to download a lot of patches to bring the copy from the CD up to date.
S
Sforzando
May 6, 2007
ok, I’ll download them. thanks very much for your help!
JJ
John Joslin
May 6, 2007
Windows will do that via Windows Update after the installation.

Don’t get into anything you’re not confident with!

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