I have to replace my mobo and I’m wondering if that will force me to activate again. I know I’ll have to reactivate windows but atleast with windows I’ll be able to boot for 3 days without reactivating.
On CS3 I thought you had to deactivate before you could reactivate and I’m concerned I might not be able to deactivate after changing the mobo.
it might. if you can, deactivate. if not, don’t sweat it. i think you get 2 rolling activations anyway (that reset after x months). even if not, worse case is you have to call. i wouldn’t sweat it too much bob.
I know I’ll have to reactivate windows but atleast with windows I’ll be able to boot for 3 days without reactivating.
that’s a good point. don’t do it over the weekend in case you need to call. 🙂
Quite likely you will need to reactivate, so you’d be prudent to deactivate PS before the hardware mod. Why? Because with motherboards being such a plethora of integrated components, commonly inclusive of graphics, audio, and network functionality, what once were often individual system components used in determining a system activation hash are now all-in-one.
As noted, you will likely have to reactivate Windows as well, although I’ve generally found it more tolerant of changes than applications requiring activation. That said, most such changes were still not of the motherboard variety. I’ve been through this myself, swapping out to a Gigabyte board after an ASUS got smoked by presumably bad onboard audio cicuity, but it’s been long enough now that I’d be hard-pressed to tell you whether I had to reactivate Windows (Vista64 and XP32 in dual-boot) or not, but I definitely did reactivate PS since I’d deactivated it in advance.
What I can tell you, and what might have circumvented a Windows reactivation, was that before I rebuilt the my system with a new motherboard, the last thing I did before the final shutdown was go into Device Manager, expand Computer so I could right-click and select ‘uninstall’ for the APCI Multiprocessor PC. This essentially unistalls all system hardware so that when I reboot with a new motherboard installed, a complete redetection of all hardware is performed without having to first uninstall drivers for the prior configuration. As I think of it, it seems my motivation for doing this in the past was not so much for avoiding having to reactivate, as for avoiding having to reinstall the O/S fresh and subsequently all applications. Perhaps with 50/50 success I’ve actually migrated a O/S and all installed apps from one system config to another by following that approach.
The last thing I’d be concerned about is having to reactivate, whether that’s regarding Windows or PS…both are pretty benign issues these days, especially if you take the proper steps in advance of your rebuild.
Ho, maybe I got ahead of myself, going from memory, as on my work PC I too find I cannot select ‘uninstall’ for the ACPI Multiprocessor PC. Although I have local admin rights on this PC, there may be some domain policy prohibiting that level of control, so I’ll have to confirm what I said once I’m on my PC at home. Unless someone else comfirms the uninstall option is available to them first, I’ll follow up later with what I find out.
The Windows activation uses score given based on the components present at time of install/activation. It is tolerant only of changes to the amount of memory, sometimes but not always a change of video cards. It will generally tolerate cloning onto a different hard drive. The Windows activation will never tolerate a change of motherboard unless it is an exact replacement. Ditto for Photoshop. Microsoft’s outsourced American jobs in India are very tolerant about giving a new activation code. I have had similar luck with those who work for Adobe in what used to be American jobs.
Well, forget my suggestion regarding uninstalling the ACPI PC, as even on my PCs at home I am not finding an ‘uninstall’ option, further leaving me to wonder if I did that with my most recent motherboard upgrade. Now I am guessing not, and maybe that was only an option with an earlier version of XP when I was running dual P3 CPUs and the Computer was reported as something other than an "ACPI" PC; I do know for a while that not all my system components supported ACPI, but I forget what computer type was indicated.
Ah, thanks Bart…I didn’t know my idea was that outdated, but was beginning to wonder. I thought for certain I’d done that a few times with XP but maybe I lost track among the PCs at work I’d done some upgrades of. I hadn’t really thought it likely to be a problem for MS, but I think I follow what you’re thinking..
Ho, that looks like good info to keep a bookmark for…thanks. It seems vaguely familiar but nothing I recall having done before.
Bart, yeah, I’ve not been around the forum too much of late. Just distracted with helping my sister on her book and now kinda’ getting back into doing more of my own stuff again.
Thanks for the reply. Cool thing about my network is that the internet works for every computer except mine. Neat haw?
Anyways, the goal is indeed to avoid reinstalling. I made a bonehead move of not checking the cpu voltage on the motherboard (sort of not my fault though cause newegg doesn’t advertise the voltage on mobos). So I was getting about a 200-400 cpu score on 3DMark when it should have been about 4000.
Actually I think I just confirmed the answer. When I was building my systems I imaged one hard drive after installing everything and cloned that to another drive and put it in the other system (exactly same hardware just different mac/serial numbers on nic/cpu/hd). I remember I had to reactivate cs3 on the 2nd computer too.
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