{"id":319,"date":"2009-02-12T00:00:34","date_gmt":"2009-02-12T05:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/?p=319"},"modified":"2009-05-23T19:18:31","modified_gmt":"2009-05-24T00:18:31","slug":"problems-removing-and-installing-adobe-cs4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/problems-removing-and-installing-adobe-cs4\/","title":{"rendered":"Problems Removing and Installing Adobe CS4"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Take my advice: <strong>Before you even think about installing Adobe trial software, do a full mirror backup of your computer&#8217;s hard disk, and be prepared to use it.<\/strong> I had horrible problems with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/creativesuite\/\">Adobe Creative Suite 4<\/a> (CS4), and according to the three tech support guys in India that I spent hours on the phone with today, I am not the only one.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s the whole sad story, with the ultimate solution.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>I <strong>downloaded and installed trial versions<\/strong> of Adobe CS4 programs while waiting for my licensed copy to arrive in the mail. The Adobe site said that I could enter my serial number in the trial copies, so I didn&#8217;t mind the 2 gig download.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>When my licensed version arrived, I <strong>tried to enter my serial number into the trial software and it was rejected<\/strong>. I called Adobe tech support and was told this sometimes happens &#8211; I just have to uninstall the trial software and reinstall from DVD.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I tried to uninstall the software in the usual way, and <strong>the uninstall failed &#8211; repeatedly<\/strong>. It took about 15 minutes to run, and then told me the program was not uninstalled, &#8220;see below for why.&#8221; But there was nothing written &#8220;below&#8221;. I call Adobe tech support again.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>After again making me spell out my mailing and email address, Adobe tech support told me to <strong>download the Adobe CS4 cleanup utility and uninstall it that way<\/strong>. I did this, and it appeared to remove all registry entries. The files were still on my disk and in my Start menu, so I deleted these manually.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I loaded up my DVD and try to install my licensed copy &#8211; software that retails for $1799 (no decimal points there). <strong>But the trial version was not completely gone and the installation failed, repeatedly<\/strong>, with no details as to why.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I called Adobe tech support for the third time, and again had to laboriously spell out my mailing and email address. The tech support guy told me to download a Flash removal utility and run that. I did as instructed. He then told me to download the Adobe CS3 cleanup utility. I told him I&#8217;d never had Adobe CS3 on my computer, but he said to download and run it anyway. <strong>His instructions had the quality of a magic spell<\/strong>: run it three times for Level 1, three times for Level 2, four times for Level 3, and four times for Level 4. This seemed pointless to me &#8211; especially since log messages made it clear that nothing further was removed after the first run &#8211; but I did as instructed.<\/p>\n<p>Then he told me to create a new admin account on my computer and install the program from there. That&#8217;s where I got off the bus. <strong>No way was I reconfiguring my computer and creating a new admin account I didn&#8217;t want or need just to install this software!<\/strong> He said that if I wouldn&#8217;t do as he said he couldn&#8217;t help me any further, and he hung up.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>Hoping that the additional cleanup had fully removed the trial software from my system, <strong>I again tried to install Adobe CS4 from the DVD I&#8217;d purchased at great expense, and again it failed<\/strong>. I cursed loudly, which my neighbors surely heard through the thin walls of my apartment building.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I then did the only thing left to me: <strong>I wiped my hard disk, and restored my most recent backup<\/strong> &#8211; which luckily was from only 10 days ago. I also restored some some additional data I saved before the Big Wipe, then I did another mirror backup just in case.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>With great anxiety (since I was out of ideas if this failed), I again ran the installation program from DVD. Happily, this time things went a little better. But <strong>even with a clean system, one of the packages &#8211; InDesign 4 &#8211; failed to install<\/strong>. The error message gave no hint of why. I continued with the rest of the installation, and everything else installed properly.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>After the installation program finally completed &#8211; it took at least an hour (what takes so long?!) &#8211; <strong>I followed this advice from an Adobe KnowledgeBase article:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p>I ran msconfig, using the Start menu&#8217;s Run command.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>On the Startup tab, I clicked Disable All.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>On the Services tab, I selected Hide All Microsoft Services, clicked Disable All, then reselected the two FLEXnet Licensing Service items.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I applied the changes, clicked OK, rebooted, and ran the Adobe CS4 installation program again, selecting only InDesign 4 to reinstall. <strong>The installation finally completed without errors.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p>I went back into msconfig, selected Normal startup, and again rebooted. My $1799 software suite was finally installed &#8211; only took 12 hours, great distress, shouting loud enough for my neighbors to hear, and a full-blown migraine.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For the record, I am running 64-bit Vista on a Thinkpad T400, and I disabled my antivirus software and firewall before installing or uninstalling. I noticed that the trial software on the Adobe site is 32-bit rather than 64-bit (unlike what was available on DVD). This could have been part of the problem.<\/p>\n<p>This software costs thousands of dollars &#8211; don&#8217;t you think Adobe should ensure the thing works before collecting that much money from people??<\/p>\n<p>So be warned!! <strong>Do not even think of installing software from Adobe &#8211; especially trial or beta software &#8211; without first doing a complete system backup.<\/strong> If you need to do a clean install, the only way is to wipe your system.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Take my advice: Before you even think about installing Adobe trial software, do a full mirror backup of your computer&#8217;s hard disk, and be prepared to use it. I had horrible problems with Adobe Creative Suite 4 (CS4), and according to the three tech support guys in India that I spent hours on the phone &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/2009\/02\/problems-removing-and-installing-adobe-cs4\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Problems Removing and Installing Adobe CS4<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":445,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions\/445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sherylcanter.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}