Jan 12, 2010  Removing Deactivation Limit Currently, activating Adobe software has a limit on the number of deactivations that can occur. For all Adobe activating software (including Acrobat-based products), that deactivation limit is 20. Starting January 15th, the deactivation limit will no longer be enforced.

Deactivations are useful when installing the software on a new system. Adobe’s license agreements stipulate that the software can be installed on two different systems at any one time. Activation is intended to enforce this license agreement.

When installing on a new system it is often necessary to remove the software from older systems. That removal is tracked by deactivating the software on the old system prior to removing it. The deactivation limit has caused numerous problems and I’m very happy to see it go. As stated above, we should go live on the a new activation server implementation on January 15th that completely removes the deactivation limit. Although deactivation is still necessary (which causes some other problems), there should no longer be any limit to the number of deactivations. In email discussions with a couple of readers I mentioned that this implementation may go live as late as March. I’m happy to say that we were able to certify and post it earlier.

Note that this affects software as far back as Adobe Creative Suite 3 and Acrobat 8. Update: Per one of the comments, here’s a URL for getting help from adobe.com.

Still does not help those of us who can’t deactivate because the menu option is dimmed out. And of course, no live support available today on Saturday because of a system upgrade. So, we have a tight deadline and no joy here.

I opened a complaint with the BBB and we have had it with Adobe products. We have original disks and activation codes and can’t use legitimate copies we have paid good money for.

The solution for us will not be to buy new copies from an unethical company- we had to run out and buy 10 copies of Nitro today retail. I agree with David. This is some time passed the original post, but I am STILL waiting for an email (almost 2 years now) from Adobe addressing the fact that there is only 1 way to deactivate a CS product so I can reinstall. I don’t know what happened, but Photoshop CS5 crashes at launch, and therefore I can’t go Photoshop>Help>Deactivate. Live chat, and phone-in customer support are full of high school drop outs that are still trying to figure out where the power button is on their computer. Eric, you seem like a knowledgeable person, or at least knowledgeable enough to fake it.

Adobe Cs5 Master Collection Hosts File Crackers Comment cracker Adobe CS5!? Voici le moyen le plus efficace et s Imaginez que vous puissiez avoir un logiciel Adobe sur votre ordinateur, une suite CS5 par. Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts.

Can I get a response from Adobe other than “1. Championship Swim Training Bill Sweetenham Pdf Reader. Launch Photoshop. Click Help>Deactivate. Uninstall, and reinstall, and reactivate.” Apparently the dense skulls can’t figure out that step 1 is the problem I am having. If i could launch photoshop without it crashing, I wouldn’t be fighting this for the last 2 years. Mike, We do still have on our backlog of work to do a means of deactivating machines from a web browser (either the machine used for browsing or other machines) and some progress is being made in that direction.

That said, for the two issues you explicitly brought up here with your version of Photoshop: (1) Need to deactivate – If you can privately send me the version, language, platform and serial number (most importantly the serial number) then I can increase the activation limit for your serial number. This will allow you to install and execute Photoshop on a new machine. My email address is. (2) Photoshop is crashing – If you want to investigate the crash, I can escalate to a Photoshop customer support specialist. You should find them very knowledgeable. This will involve some investment from you to help them isolate and debug the issue, so its up to you whether or not you want me to refer you.

Please let me know. Adobe’s licensing system is a disgrace. I purchased Acrobat 9 Standard and it worked for a few hours until the Licensing System failed. The product was licensed and registered. Worse still, it took another Adobe licensed product down with it. I see the web is full of patches for this.

If I purchase a product I expect it to work and if it fails I expect the manufacturer to fix it, not supply me a tool kit and suggest I get started. Adobe has also failed to answer my Support Case request. Looks like I will be requesting a refund, which is sad because when it did work it worked well. Whoever thought up the licensing system needs to think again. I agree with the NEED for a way to activate/deactivate on failed systems. I just completed a new mainboard and Hard Disk replacement after failures, now I encounter that my LEGAL Acrobat Standard software will die in 30 days.

The telephone activation process demands prior activation data that died with the system and the reinstall apparently advises Adobe that there is a new system board, which Adobe chooses to believe is in another PC! HOW CAN YOU TREAT CUSTOMERS THIS WAY? Live chat is down. The wait on the customer support line is intolerable (our time costs money! Our telephone minutes cost money!) Can someone at Adobe send me the activation solution?

If not please have Adobe advise how I can get a refund for all the investment I have in the liscense. Can I get a refund? Susie, Retail licenses can be installed on two separate systems.

With CS4 (not CS5 or Acrobat 10), the change of a hard drive will trigger the licensing system to consider the computer as a different system. So you may run into the two limit. If that’s the case, you should call customer care and let them know what happened. They can then increase the limit to unblock you.

Feel free to send me email directly if you run into further problems. Customer support is usually faster than I am when people run into the two limit, though. Thanks, –Eric. Eric, I just had the similar situation with my pc.

Yet the motherboard crashed and they took my old hard drive and put it in the new pc along with the other hard drive. Now I have the warning for 30 days and I bought and need this program for school. Can I send you my serial number and have the limit removed. My other system it was on was my laptop which will no longer turn on. So I have no way to deactivate it on either system. If I could have just one more limit that would help me out a ton. -Alisha Landreth.

I have the exact same problem as some of these people, that my old computer is now inaccessible. My cat peed on my laptop and although I was able to take it to an apple service person to pull the data off and transfer it to a new computer that I had to buy unexpectedly, I do not have a way of accessing my old programs (the service technician forgot to deactivate, and then when he reconnected to my old drive to try, the deactivate button was greyed out, so I can’t deactivate. I have to have this up and running before Monday night, and have not been able to find any adobe support that is available on the weekend. I have a new computer and all my software is still residing in the same folders as before, but i cannot activate OR deactivate. If anyone can help me I would truly appreciate it. I see Eric Wilde says there is a way to do this so I will send you an email separately, as I see you gave your adobe address. I’m so glad to see someone from adobe is willng to help us.

I spent close to an hour on the phone last night (most of it on hold with two different people, and when I had finally gotten to the point where it seemed like we were getting somewhere, we got cut off, and although he had taken my number in case that happened, he never called me back. And by the time I realized he was not going to call, it was too late and adobe was closed for the weekend. This is so unacceptable for a company that makes products for those of us who often work on weekends out of necessity. And if we are working on the weekend, it’s usually something hot. Re: I installed all creative suite /cloud products (CS6 and CC master collection) on my main hard drive which has just failed. I can’t deactivate the products on the dead drive.

I tried installing on the new drive but they won’t activate because I did not deactivate/deauthorize on the previous drive, which were mac and pc installs on different partitions. I wrote to another member on a private message, Millenium, because he seemed to know something about the procedure. I got this response from Ankit at Adobe who does not seem to know what a dead drive is, or what it means not to be able to deactivate/deauthorize. Since you offered to help Gerald, I thought you might give me a suggestion. Created by Ankit Khurana in Downloading, Installing, Setting Up – View the full discussion Hi there, Unfortunately we cannot deactivate the products without accessing them however if you have a Creative cloud membership then it is possible to install and activate on a new machine. While activating it will ask you to De-activate previous machine (if the software is already installed on 2 machines) or else it will activate without any problems.

Kathleen, I’ll follow up in more detail in private email; but, for subscribers this worry about overactivation should be far less – particularly for the use case you site here. It is possible to install on another machine and remotely (or in this case, without the original hardware) deactivate the original system.

The way its designed to behave for subscriptions is that if you install on a third system and don’t have an available activation you will get a message asking if you want to remotely deactivate the other systems. It seems you’re not seeing this behavior. I’ll follow up in private email to get the exact error message you do see. Thanks, –Eric. There isn’t a very good solution for customers to help themselves at this point.

So I don’t have a good solution to share. The general approach is to interact with customer care. Customer care is well trained on this common issue. Long term what I want to do is one of two things: (1) Dramatically change the current activation policy. Its causing all sort of difficulties (such as this one) for customers. This is my preferred approach.

(2) For the current activation policy provide a self-help tool. I’d really love to do this now; but, other priorities are consuming the engineering team. What Adobe should look at is what SmartDraw does – I have SmartDraw software which can also be on any two computers. However, rather than deactivate/activate, I can FROM ANY COMPUTER connected to the internet, remove the activations myself, to allow the software to be installed on other computers.

The SmartDraw server remembers the machines it has been installed upon, and if I am working between 5 or 6 (or 10 or 20) machines or virtual machines, I can eventually just manage which 2 PC’s are active via checkboxes. Much easier and no frustrated calls to tech support. It is worth a look perhaps? Steven Shippee Olympia, Washington. Abdul, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to help you. Macromedia Flash 8 was released many years ago and before Adobe acquired Macromedia.

There have been multiple versions of the product released in the intervening years. Nobody on my engineering team has ever worked with Macromedia Flash 8. I suspect the real problem will be that the OS has indeed changed substantially (particularly with respect to security issues) over the years. That said, one area of which I’ve seen similar problems a more recent version (though still a couple of years old) of Adobe software is when the serial number on the Mac hardware is bogus. This only effects CS3 versions of Adobe software. The Macromedia Flash 8 licensing solution was closer to the CS3 versions of Adobe software than anything else in Adobe at this point. So it has a slim chance of being the same issue: Other than that, I think your best bet is to interact with customer service.

I agree that this is a step in the right direction. However I would encourage adobe to seriously look at other issues that others have mentioned that need to be seriously dealt with too. I would suggest that while software piracy prevention needs to be considered – it’s been used way over the top which causes more problems for genuine users than it does pirates. There are always going to be the “what if’s” and loopholes in product activation but let’s face it – these are the exceptions and not the general rule.

If someone is really trying to get around software piracy, they’re simply going to use a crack. It’s only the genuine users that most of these ‘additional traps / what if’s, etc’ are going to cause problems for. By all means have product activation / piracy prevention – but I urge you to make it simple, and have any decisions and functions err towards favoring the legitimate user instead of stopping the devious pirate. At the end of the day pirates will always find a way around the activation, but legitimate users will at the very least get annoyed and have an unpleasant experience, if not get fed up and find alternative solutions.

I’m a developer myself, and my policy is that the customer should always come first – not the pirates. I have Adobe Design Premium CS4 and wasn’t aware of the Activation/Deactivation process.

I had trouble with with my desktop pc and had to have my operating system reinstalled then I reinstalled the adobe software. Recently purchased a laptop and installed Adobe Premium CS4 on it and it said I already have it installed on two computers when actually I don’t but it was installed on the same desktop pc twice, but I failed to do the Deactivation process.

What can I do to correct this problem and how do I go about it? Sorry about the long post. – Thank You – Howard. I, too, have run into the de/activation issue after having lost my environment due to hard disk failure. I believe you that this is a frequent occurrence yet the first hit on google of the issue is this thread.

Since I also understand engineering resources being tied up, could you provide a dedicated number or chat line for this type of issue? Or at least a page on Adobe.com’s support that leads people suffering from this issue to a quick resolution. I don’t mind making a call but I don’t like having to search all over for the answer, and then having to spend time locked up among customer service transfers. Thanks for the info, btw. It has been too many years with this infuriating activation system. I’ve been battling it since purchasing CS3. With me, being a computer technician / IT person at the time CS3 came out I was flip-flopping between XP and Vista and never knew you had to deactivate.

Within 2 or 3 months of purchasing CS3, so proud that I could afford it. (basically no average Joe can afford to buy CS in any flavour.) I was slapped in the face with “Too Many Activations” and have been battling it ever since. Having to call up customer support every few months and even though in the end they activate my product, I feel like I am on the phone with them explaining 5 times, “I formatted my computer without deactivating.” like I am being interrogated. CS5 has been out a little while now and I have contemplated buying it but. Every time I remember how poorly implemented the activation system is. I change my mind.

Adobe, it’s easier to pirate your software, that use it legitimately. Eric, I am feeling a little paranoid, having just read all the responses here, so I thought I’d ask you I used to have Illustrator10 installed on my work computer & my home computer, per the licensing agreement. It was wonderful & simple! We upgraded to CS4 some months back, but our tech at work told me I could no longer have a copy on my home computer without a major hassle (Activate/Deactivate). Is it a hassle to activate & reactivate each day or maybe 1-2 times a week.? Or is it a quick & simple switching process?

I just need to know, because if I were to somehow screw things up & not be able to access Illustrator/Photoshop here at work, my manager would not be happy! Thanks in advance for the info! I have been a legitimate Adobe software user since the very early releases, but I must say I am now walking on eggshells when it comes to installing/using your software.

I downloaded and installed the trial version of CS5 when it was first released, which caused all of my existing software (CS3 & CS4) to stop working. I had to spend several wasted hours of work time trying to fix it. (Support told me I had to remove the CS5 trial and everything else.) Finally got things working again and now a couple of months later, for no reason CS3 is giving me the dreaded “Licensing for this product has stopped working”.

I am just retiring CS3, rather than trying to fix it for fear that the “fix” will cause my functioning CS4 version to stop working. After 20 years of keeping up to date with every new release, I will not be purchasing CS5 any time soon, if at all, for fear it will screw things up even further (and I never did get a chance to try it out). Such unnecessary stress for your long standing customers!

(Glad you got rid of the deactivation limit, however, that’s a step in the right direction.). Not being psychic I was unable to deactivate PSE CS3 just before my motherboard failed. The rebuild has entailed new disks (no PATA), CPU and RAM, so restore from a backup image wasn’t possible. So as indicated in this thread, I called UK customer support. Lines too busy and I was robotically offered a callback “within 5-7minutes”.

That was 9 hours ago. It’s now 2.30 am Saturday. I have a backlog of work to do and deliver, and no idea when I shall be able to do it thanks to Adobe protecting their product from legitimate use. I am freelance, and am being forced to let clients down because of Adobe’s punitive, idiotic de/activation system. As if making a living as a photographer isn’t fragile enough already.

Eric Wilde agreed that this is all unsatisfactory, back in February, but said there are “other issues of higher priority”. Not to Adobe’s poor unfortunate customers there aren’t. I use CS5 Master for my work on Mac. I am a constant hardware fiddler, going from 5400 to 7200 to hybrid to finally SSD.

Now I have changed my system to a new iMac and have finally run into activation issues after cloning my MacBook Pro HD onto the new machine. I will be using my “old” MacBook Pro for working from home occasionally. Just to clarify, When I do so can I suspend activation on the work machine, activate it on the home machine for the day then suspend that activation and so on indefinitely?

The Realms Of Being Santayana Pdf Merge here. The Hosts file is a static name-resolution table that overrides the system's DNS server settings. It can be edited using any text-editor such as Notepad. The file is located at:%systemroot% system32 drivers etc hosts Please note that the file has no extension. To find the file manually: 1. Open 'My Computer' 2.

Open Drive C 3. Open Windows folder 4.

Open System32 folder 5. Open Drivers folder 6. Open Etc folder 7. Double-click the hosts file and choose to open using Notepad when you're asked. ** if you get 'access denied' errors when trying to save the file, try openning the file using 'Run as Administrator'.

This issue happens usually when you're working on Win Vista/7 with UAC turned on. *** on Win8 you can't just edit the file and save it on it's original location. Instead, edit the file and save it on the Desktop. Later replace the original file with the new one you saved on the desktop using the file explorer's Copy-Paste. You will probably be asked to confirm the action using Administrator account. Anonymous Works great.thanks.a few tips. *First, either log in as administrator or have admin rights.

*Navigate to the hosts file. *Right click and select properties.

*Click the Security tab. ****Make SURE that you have write permissions for the host file. I gave full write permission to every account listed.**** *Put you cursor one line below the last #. *Paste your entry ****When saving the file do NOT click Save As. Just click Save.**** *Exit Notepad and bring it back up. Re-open the Hosts file to make sure what you entered was saved correctly. *enjoy* and THANKS again to OP.MUCH appreciated!

Anonymous Start Menu/All Programs/Accessories/Right click on Note Pad/Select run as administrator/Provide password if necessary/File/Open/ go to c: windows system32 drivers etc hosts / You should be able to save it now. If you cannot you did something wrong, redo these steps. If your adobe software has made a connection to adobe you'll have to completely delete the installation. I think my did just that because after updating my hosts correctly, it still doesn't allow me to upgrade from the trail. Fl for some reason seems to be much more of a stickler than Ps. Anonymous Guys, it's very simple. Just right click the file, go to properties and un-check read only.

Then open notepad as administrator by right clicking it under accessories in your program menu. Then through notepad select file>open and go to the host file through there.

You will need to select all files so that you can see the file, it will be set to find only.txt by default. Once you find the file, double click it, make the change and save it. Close the notepad window and then right click the host file again and reset it as read only by right clicking it, selecting properties and clicking the read only check box.

Anonymous Do you change the host file BEFORE OR AFTER you install the adobe program?? Second question, once everything is set---I run program---program asks for serial---I input serial number -----at bottom it will say activate now or later----Do I select activate now?----then do i select activate by internet?----AND then this is where my host file will do its magic where the activation will loop back to my computer instead of contacting the activation server??

Please help i am so close. I think I understand or am I missing something. OR am I not suppose to see this 'activate now or later ' message if everthing goes according to plan? Anonymous Some of the people that have posted in this are complete morons and are useless to mankind. If you can't figure out how to edit a HOST file and more over save that host file after edit then you need to put your daddys computer down and go play with something else. Over 20 posts in here on how to open, edit, and save and these morons still ask HOW HOW HOW. Then you have the morons who want help CRACKING there version or think that adding Adobe redirects to local in the hosts file will remove trial versions.

Like I said, Complete Fucking Idiots!! LEARN TO READ PEOPLE!!!

Anonymous First, I am a single user of a fully licensed Acrobat 9 Standard. I installed it on the 5 different computers I use only ONE AT A TIME! WTF makes Adopie think that I going to buy 3 seperate copies of Acrobat when I (can) only use ONE computer at a time! I have no problem being legal, but I have a problem with this restriction in my particular case, forcing me to purchase something I already have! If they can phone home the moment I open my Adopie 9, then they can also tell if I am trying to use MORE THAN ONE installation! I file this under GREED! I will go find another solution!

The solution provided here looked intriging but Adopie has apparently gotten wise to this hosts file thing and it still contacts the license server whining about number of licenses in Windoze7 even with the above recommended host file changes. Just FYI, there are some log files associated with this and most likely a registry settings as well. If you block it by deleting the LOG files then it plays the 'not responding' notice and recreates the LOG files in the Temp Folder. The three LOG files in the Temp folder that are recreated even if you delet them or rename them are alm.log, amt.log and swtag.log.

There may be others as well in addition to registery stuff. The nag screen persists with the number of days you have left on planet earth unless you pay more ransom! This proggy reminds me of a virus. A trojan, in it's behaviour. The only feature I use mostly is the snapshot feature so I can save certain portions of Acrobat documents as *.jpg file that I can refer to later rather than wade through a whole 200+ page document search repeatedly. I could use Shift Prt Scn and save them that way. Adobe [1], User [0].

Anonymous to open host file: 1. Go to My Computer or Computer 2. Open Windows 4. Right click on the host file and select properties 6. Uncheck 'read only' 7.

Apply and Save 8. Open host file in a text editor (Notepad) 9.to open host file and add; 127.0.0.1 lm.licenses.adobe.com 127.0.0.1 lmlicenses.wip1.adobe.com 127.0.0.1 lmlicenses.wip2.adobe.com 127.0.0.1 lmlicenses.wip3.adobe.com 127.0.0.1 lmlicenses.wip4.adobe.com Save it.

It will be wise to go back to Host file properties and check read only again. Just for safety. Anonymous Hi all. Do you think I can install a new version (with a serial that I own) on a computer that has other Adobe cracked softwares, hence with a modified host file (with adobe addresses blocked). Meaning, I want to download and buy LR4 and install it.

Do I have to clean the host file first, uninstall all the cracked software, purchase, download and install the purchased LR4 and then modified the host file and then reinstall some other cracked softwares? I know it doesn't make sense to buy for a software and crack others. But I feel the need to pay for LR4 as I will use it a lot. Anonymous Hey I have a simple question that hasnt been answered yet. Do you change the host file BEFORE OR AFTER you install the adobe program?? Second question, once everything is set---I run program---program asks for serial---I input serial number -----at bottom it will say activate now or later----Do I select activate now?----then do i select activate by internet?----AND then this is where my host file will do its magic where the activation will loop back to my computer instead of contacting the activation server?? Please help i am so close.

I think I understand or am I missing something. OR am I not suppose to see this 'activate now or later ' message if everthing goes according to plan? Anonymous I have CS5.1 Photoshop Extended edition. The 30 day trial is up. Edited hosts file in the Dec 18 post by Anonymous above. Tried many serial #s but always goes to the Create Adobe ID screen. I created a fake email ID but doesn't work.

Says 'We are unable to start your subscription for Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 Extended'. When I close the window and restart program, it again asks for serial number as trial has ended. Can anyone give a step by step instructions on what to do now? And in which order to edit host file - before or after install? Uninstall and reinstall (if so, where should I download file)?

- Install as trial or do I input a serial # from the beginning? Then edit hosts file with which ip addresses (is Dec 18 post correct)? Where find serial #?

Should I create an Adobe ID or will it never get to that screen after inputting serial number if the edited hosts file is correct? Thanks very much - this would be so appreciated! Anonymous I've used this method for a while now and it works. Problem is using 127.0.0.1 causes issues with other programs, Carbonite Backup, for one. When I open it's control panel, it won't run. Called Carbonite and they logged into my computer and looked at my localhost file.

The tech was laughing when he was asking if I used Adobe. I said yes and realized what he saw. Can I use another 127.x.x.x number that will still do the Adobe work around and open up 127.0.0.1 to other programs that use it? Anonymous To edit and save the hosts file, you don't change permissions or any of the other asinine suggestions proffered in the posts above. To edit and save it, do it properly with administrator privileges. Click 'Start,' go to notepad and right click it, choose 'Run As Administrator,' the click 'File' in the upper left corner of notepad and choose 'Open,' then navigate to the hosts file. As you're doing so, make sure you change the file types in the lower right hand corner from 'Text Documents' to 'All Files' or you won't be able to see anything when you open the 'etc' folder.

That's how it's done properly. Regards, -Greg.