All you need have available is the installation CD of the earlier version, CS in your case. Nothing is installed from that CD, and everything you need is part of the CS3 installation process.
Unless you have other reasons for reformatting your drive, I’d suggest you at least try doing the CS3 upgrade before going that slow, painful route of reinstalling everything. You don’t have to activate until the installation has been successfully completed and 30 days elapsed (normally true), so if things failed and you did reformat your drive to start clean again, you’d not have any deactivation to worry about.
Yes, activation is separate from the upgrade and, as I stated, is performed only once you’ve successfully installed PS CS3 and decide to proceed with activation.
Regards,
Daryl
During the installation, CS3’s installer will ask you to momentarily insert the CD of your previous version so no need to install CS first.
great info… i had called adobe as my daughter has education version of cs2 which is still full version but lacks goodies folder only.
she wants cs3 on her laptop and was looking at upgrade for $199 ($299 fro full cs3 extended)so i called adobe to ask if it "sniff" disc from cs2 when asked as i keep all our machines as clean as posible and would prefere the registry not be cluttered with old stuff (i clean install all our machines twice a year and have it down to a science.
anyhow adobe told me i must have cs2 on machine for upgrade to work… personally i don’t think the person i spoke with had a clue. was calling from work and didn’t have serial number handy from her machine and they were able to look up our stuff from regristartation email address.
anyhow i too would blow out cs2 and clean up registry before installing cs3 extended (extended is all they seem to offer from journey ed and other eductaional resellers).
I would not remove CS2 until completely happy with CS3. There are problems.
Browse around in this forum!
One other point that I don’t see covered…You cannot upgrade a suite component with an individual point product upgrade.
Bob
Thanks to all for comments. I really need to clean up my drive to get rid of some "barnacles" in any case — not just because of PS. As I said, I am still only considering an upgrade since I have indeed been reading the forums.
Bob, could you explain what you mean by "an individual point product upgrade"?
The point products are Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Acrobat, etc. If you already have the suite you cannot purchase and install only the Photoshop upgrade…you must upgrade the entire suite.
Bob
