Make CS3 and Windows 7 64bit play nice.

January 14, 2011 10:37 AM

I am trying to get the Adobe CS3 design premium suite working on my Windows 7, 64-bit gaming computer, which meets and exceed CS3's minimum specs. The install went fine, and I know the disks are good as they worked on my old (dead) XP computer. Most of the programs (Bridge, Flash, etc.) will open a process, but not actually open anything on the screen. Photoshop will open, but all that appears is the gray background, and the menu bar. It hangs immediately. It won't even open the Photoshop "loading..." splash/credits screen. How can I get these programs running? (Yes, I tried googling it, and no, it isn't a TWAIN issue).
posted by flibbertigibbet to computers & internet (11 answers total)

Did you try reinstalling? Before trying any crazy fixes you should see about reinstalling.

Maybe certain plug-ins or drivers are causing problems.
posted by jykmf at 10:44 AM on January 14, 2011

Do you have any other CS versions or any other Adobe software installed on your machine?

I had huge issues in installing different CS suites on the same machine (i.e. CS3 design with CS4 web). Something about the way the adobe registration works did not allow this to work.
posted by davey_darling at 10:48 AM on January 14, 2011

jykmf: This is my 7th attempt installing. The problem is consistent across installs. I last tried to install 2 months ago.

Davey: Other than Acrobat, nope, nothing else.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 10:53 AM on January 14, 2011

It sounds like your installation doesn't think it is registered. You might un-register and re-register. Or uninstall and re-install completely.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:54 AM on January 14, 2011

After installing, are you able to install all the updates? If you can't run Adobe Updater, is there a direct download somewhere? I thought I had a link to a manual CS3 update patch, but can't find it right now.... Updating everything might fix the issue, if this is a bug that was later patched.

I am currently running CS3 Web Premium on Windows 7 64-bit, and I haven't had any issues... except one: I had to disable the virtual wireless adapter on the system in order to run Adobe Updater. It kept telling me "no internet connection" until I did that.
posted by Vorteks at 11:00 AM on January 14, 2011

If you can't run Adobe Updater, you can get the CS3 updates as a direct download from here it seems (CS5 is at the top, CS3 is about halfway down the page). They may have to be installed one product at a time. That might solve your problem?

As Blazecock Pileon said, make sure your software has been activated.
posted by Vorteks at 11:03 AM on January 14, 2011

Blazecock: I can't even get to registration/activation yet. In order to register, I need one of the programs to open--so long as I can open one of them, I can activate them all (either via an Activate Now prompt, or going into Help --> Activate). Unfortunately, none of them want to open, so I can't activate them. They were completely deactivated from my last install. (I could try to activate over the phone, but I am not in a situation where that is currently feasible).

Manual updates are not working, I can't even find Adobe Updater on my computer.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 11:18 AM on January 14, 2011

Searching Google for "'windows 7' cs3" returned a page which pointed to a link:

http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=3750
posted by rhizome at 11:26 AM on January 14, 2011

I had this exact problem a couple of weeks ago. I installed this patch, and even though from the description it doesn't look like it should have anything to do with the problem, it did the trick.

After installing that patch and rebooting, open up Photoshop. It will be a little slow the first time but then it will give you the licensing/registration screen like it's supposed to.
posted by zjacreman at 11:28 AM on January 14, 2011

What's the processor in this machine? When I used to hang out on the Adobe forums, there was always some debate/grumbling about AMD vs. Intel, and some users had issues with AMD, but this was pre-Win7 days.
posted by sageleaf at 12:32 PM on January 14, 2011

Zjacreman: hmm, that particular patch didn't work, but I'll focusing on Acrobat based on your hint!

Sageleaf: Yeah, I'm using an AMD processor.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 12:41 PM on January 14, 2011