Help my find my Photoshop license.
January 5, 2010 11:54 AM Subscribe
I can't find my Photoshop license/authorization!
I have my Photoshop CS2 on my external drive. When I plugged the HD into my new computer, PS started up but then gave me a message saying something like "You are not authorized to use this; Photoshop will now close" (I'm at work, so I can't tell you exactly what it said). I'm thinking that when I moved the program to my external drive, I left the licensing on my old C: drive. Can someone tell me what file.extension I am looking for? It worked fine when the external drive was hooked up to my old computer.
I have my Photoshop CS2 on my external drive. When I plugged the HD into my new computer, PS started up but then gave me a message saying something like "You are not authorized to use this; Photoshop will now close" (I'm at work, so I can't tell you exactly what it said). I'm thinking that when I moved the program to my external drive, I left the licensing on my old C: drive. Can someone tell me what file.extension I am looking for? It worked fine when the external drive was hooked up to my old computer.
I don't have an Adobe EULA in front of me, but I suspect putting the program on a portable drive violates the licensing terms - if it worked off a portable drive, there'd be no practical difference between this and having it installed on every computer you take the portable drive to. My guess is the registration is done through (assuming you are using Windows) the Registry, or in arcane system files, which are of course on the first computer.
posted by aught at 12:33 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by aught at 12:33 PM on January 5, 2010
Best answer: I believe the key words here are 'new computer.' I don't know about CS2 in particular, but typically activated licenses (as with that series of software) only work with one computer by means of a unique identifier on that computer. Otherwise, in theory, you could just clone a drive 'n' times and have one installation of Photoshop per drive on an unlimited amount of computers. Which would defeat the concept of activated licenses entirely.
It worked on the external drive on your old computer because the activated license was tied to your old computer. And the knowledge of which file to copy or what to do to circumvent or work around activating the license has you going down the road of reverse engineering their copy protection system..which is bad.
Anyway, reinstall it on the new computer and activate the license over the phone or internet and you should be all right.
posted by ostranenie at 12:38 PM on January 5, 2010
It worked on the external drive on your old computer because the activated license was tied to your old computer. And the knowledge of which file to copy or what to do to circumvent or work around activating the license has you going down the road of reverse engineering their copy protection system..which is bad.
Anyway, reinstall it on the new computer and activate the license over the phone or internet and you should be all right.
posted by ostranenie at 12:38 PM on January 5, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks, all. That makes sense. I'll do a re-install.
posted by wafaa at 1:59 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by wafaa at 1:59 PM on January 5, 2010
CS3 required a deactivation before the license could be used again on a different computer. You may be OK with CS2 but I would expect that you will need to explain things to an Adobe person over the phone to get it activated again on your new system.
posted by caution live frogs at 2:29 PM on January 5, 2010
posted by caution live frogs at 2:29 PM on January 5, 2010
The complicating factor here is that these programs phone home to get permission to install. The home server keeps track of how many installs you've done, and when you reach the limit (I think it's 3) then you can't install again unless you uninstall one of the previous copies first.
The uninstaller also phones home, so the home server knows it's happened. (As long as you have an internet connection running when you do the uninstall.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:55 PM on January 5, 2010
The uninstaller also phones home, so the home server knows it's happened. (As long as you have an internet connection running when you do the uninstall.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:55 PM on January 5, 2010
As with XP, if you have reached the maximum amount of installs/license activations, you will probably be allowed to manually activate it over the phone if you have a good reason why you need to install it more than the allowable amount of times. All this is to prevent software piracy, not hassle legitimate users, so if it's activation #4 or #5, they will let it ride.
On the other hand, if it's activation #9 and people are calling in once a week to activate the license because "my computer crashed," they are going to get hung up on.
posted by ostranenie at 5:57 AM on January 6, 2010
On the other hand, if it's activation #9 and people are calling in once a week to activate the license because "my computer crashed," they are going to get hung up on.
posted by ostranenie at 5:57 AM on January 6, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Most applications are not built to be run from a external drive (the exception being portable ones). I suggest you uninstall, then reinstall Photoshop to your built-in drive and it should work again.
If it would be as easy as moving a license file to a new location, Photoshop's copy-protecting wouldn't be of much use. So I guess this solution would not work.
posted by oxit at 12:25 PM on January 5, 2010