NOTE If this tip saves you time and your sanity, you can tip me by buying either of my iPhone apps: Split Finder or Splitcaster. Thanks in advance! :)
NOTE Check out the bottom of this post for some updates to possible solutions, including how to fix this problem under OS X 10.7 Lion
I fired up Photoshop today and was greeted by this message:
Same thing when I started Flash. Awesome… Keep in mind my Mac has been on for days and hasn’t had any other problems. I really hadn’t done anything strange to break something. And I’m sure I’d used an Adobe product yesterday.
Rebooting, of course, didn’t fix anything.
Looking for help on Adobe’s forum didn’t help.
But Google did.
I found a page that basically explained how to hack around Adobe’s activation. I didn’t need to go that far, since I actually have a legal license. But part of the “how to steal CS4″ post did help. All I had to do was get Adobe’s Licensing Repair tool here.
I ran that and it worked immediately. No reboot needed. I’m thinking I got lucky.
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I just noticed that this process dumped a folder named “AdobeLicensingFilesBackup” into my Home folder. So, be aware of that.
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UPDATE: Saturday, August 1, 2009
I see that this simply isn’t working for some people, but it looks like it still works for others. I don’t have an explanation for this. All I know is that it worked for me so I thought I’d share it with the world.
I know that a fair number of people are landing on this page every day and would love to hear from those who it does work for, so I know that this tip is still useful.
UPDATE: Monday, August 31, 2009 – Try deleting the FLEXnet Publisher folder
One of the replies below, from Simon, pointed out that you might need to delete the following folder for things to work again:
/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher
That’s worked for a few people out there, so give it a shot before you throw in the towel.
UPDATE: Wednesday, September 9, 2009
From Rob B. in the comments below:
The Flexnet Publisher folder must be deleted. Not JUST the flexnet folder inside. ALONG WITH THIS the Adobe PCD.cache file must be deleted also. It is located in library/application support/adobe/adobe PCD/ cache/ cache.db
UPDATE: Monday, May 16, 2011 – Works with CS5 and CS5.5, too
Based on some comments below, this fix works for CS5 and the newly released CS5.5 as well.
UPDATE: Friday, October 7, 2011 – The Lion Fix
In the comments, codeman38 was the first to explain how to run the License Recovery app under Lion:
- Mount the .dmg for the license recovery app.
- Open Terminal.
Run the following two commands:
cd /Volumes/LicenseRecovery\ 11.6.1/LicenseRecovery/ sudo python LicenseRecover.py
Thanx alot! These tips are still useful.
thanks much! this helped tremendously
Wow. Glad I found this page — worked like a charm. Thanks!
THANK YOU!!!!! worked perfectly
I love you. Seriously. The instructions on the Adobe website didn’t work, but the The Lion Fix above worked perfectly.
Wow! last time i just reinstalled the lot! You just saved me at least an hour of Adobe time..
more info in adobe’s site http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51260.html
Doesn’t work. The instructions for the License app are wrong, and it won’t run…!
It’s amazing that they cannot publish the correct sequence of commands on the Adobe website at:
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/512/cpsid_51260.html#main_Solution_2__Run_the_License_Repair_Tool
I independently hacked my way through the solution to the path and file names (I am a programmer) and sent an error report to Adobe with a replacement step-by-step process. They didn’t acknowledge with even so much as an auto responder.
I’m so fed up with Adobe’s crap. I upgraded to CS5.5 to avoid being blocked out of future upgrades due to their new rules and found that there’s no good way to move over all of your settings from the older versions of the apps to the new ones. So, in effect, it’s not an upgrade but a fresh install. It’s just too bad there are too many features I actually do depend on in Photoshop that no competitor has.
I can’t believe how crappy Adobe’s Customer Service has become. I spent hours on hold today getting bounced from one department to another. Finally they insisted I had to reinstall the entire suite, which fixed nothing! I was just on hold for the past hour, when I finally hung up because I found this via Google. Thanks SO much!
Thank you! The license recovery app directions worked like a charm! I tried to follow the directions on the Adobe site which gave me error after error. Couldn’t find any flex net files (am moving from one mac to a new one and the flex net files only show up in the old mac) but the license recovery worked!
This worked for my legal, licensed software on Lion – THANK YOU!
thank you completely for this crucial fix!!!
Read through this with interest as I just experienced it with Indesign CS4 after migrating from my old iMac to new iMac running Lion 10.7.2.
I’ve uninstalled Indesign, deleted the flexnet folder and Adobe.pcd cache as suggested, restarted and did a clean install from the disc.
I seem to have cured the 150:30 licence expired error but can now only run it in Trial mode as it wont accept the serial number even though it’s a legit original package?
Any ideas folks? Don’t want to run scripts etc in case there’s a simple answer.
Ian
T H A N K Y O U ! I am free from Adobe disease and very grateful. Awesome Lion Fix tip.
We won’t be free from Adobe disease until we can use non-Adobe software to do what we use Adobe software for. I hope that day will come soon.
Erik, you ain’t kidding. A little piece of me dies every time I have to use an Adobe product.
Pixelmator (for OSX) is getting really close to replacing Photoshop completely in my office…but it isn’t QUITE there yet. Hopefully it will be soon.
Many thanks for this easy fix! Kind of you to share.
Worked for me. Does anyone know how Adobe manages to infiltrate our computers to set up the error??
The tool worked succesfully with CS 5.5 under Lion. Many many thanks, I solved the problem within minutes. The greatest thanks for this info !!!
I get syntax error: “unexpected character after line continuation character” when I run the cd /Volumes/LicenseRecovery\ 11.6.1/LicenseRecovery/ command. How do I fix that?
The Lion Fix worked for me! Big thanks to all involved!
Here’s what happened to me:
iMac harddrive died. Replaced the harddrive and restored from yesterday’s Timemachine backup. Everything on my computer was restored to exactly how it was yesterday (even open chat windows, browser tabs and all that for anyone who hasn’t used Timemachine before – it’s a beautiful thing).
No program in my Adobe Master Suite would launch. They would all give me Error: 150:30. Adobe’s website looked promising, but upon attempting their solutions I realized that none of them were even possible to attempt.
Spoke with an Adobe tech who told me that their website was wrong and that my ONLY recourse was to completely remove and reinstall the $1800 suite of software.
Found this wonderful website and fixed it my-damn-self in under 2 minutes.
Then the tech sent me an email written entirely in Finnish.
Morale of the story? Sell your Adobe stock, folks. That company is doomed.
Ha… Glad it worked for you. I absolutely despise Adobe and hate the fact that I’m dependent upon them to get work done. Until there is a real alternative to Photoshop (don’t say Acorn or Pixelmator, as they aren’t), they’re going to have us by the balls and there will be no reason for them to fix their software. I hear that Lightroom is great, which probably has to do with the fact that it doesn’t have 15 years of baggage attached to it. But there’s no way I’m going to make myself more dependent upon Adobe. I’ll stick with Aperture, warts and all.
Sorry. Minor rant :)
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i found your site looking for a way to get cs4 back running again. i have an apple mbp running lion. i had some problems & called apple care. they had me start from the beginning & reinstalled from the osX.6 disc then redownloaded & installed lion. i had cs4 running before this w/ the hack from http://machacks.tv/2009/01/28/stop-adobe-cs4-calling-home-to-mother-ship-in-os-x/. the 2nd tier mac rep was cool w/me & helped me migrate the cs4 from time machine. but i get the adobe 150:30 error when i launch, i went back & cleared the adobe PCD/ cache/ cache.db file . i’ve looked for the FLEXnet Publisher in both libraries but its not there. tried to run the terminal hack again. i paste: sudo /Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /etc/hosts Hit return and try to enter my admin password when prompted but it won’t let me type my password in. it prompts for it but nothing happens . can some one help me ?
Here’s what worked for me: I switched to another mac and got my files & apps from a TimeMachine backup and here comes the error 150:30 above. Simply running the License Recovery tool didn’t work, even after multiple restarts. However, removing the FlexNet Publisher and cache.db and running it again did work but I got promoted to enter my key again, which I don’t have anymore, so here’s how step-by-step how I got around it. Hope it helps someone.
I am on Lion OSX 10.7
A. First place in a safe place the following: 1. FlexNet Publisher folder: [hard drive]/Library/Application Support/FlexNet Publisher/ 2. Remove cache.db library/application support/adobe/adobe PCD/cache/ cache.db
B. Download recovery tool (link above) and doubleclick to mount it. Open Terminal: cd /Volumes/LicenseRecovery\ 11.6.1/LicenseRecovery/ sudo python LicenseRecover.py
C. Start Photoshop, it will ask you for your Serial. Enter if you have it. And if you don’t, just close photoshop and place back the file and folder (FlexNet Publisher and cache.db) that we removed above. Restart Photoshop again and you should have a smile on your face :)
Life Saver! Thanks!
Thanks a lot for sharing this! It totally worked!
Thank you so much for this! The terminal commands on the adobe website weren’t working for me, but the ones you posted fixed everything in a flash.
Hey – this update worked easily on PS CS4, with “The Lion Fix” above. Thanks again.
Worked great with Lion / Fash CS4 : Thanx !!! ;-)
Thank you so much – Lion fix worked a treat. :)))
Great! The “Lion fix” worked for me (on Snow Leopard). I’m glad somebody posted this single command line that does the job: the LicenseRecoveryLauncher wanted me to install Rosetta to run!!! Yikes! Seriously, why are you Adobe the only ones to do this kind of nasty trick to honest customers (personally I bumped into this problem after a Time Machine restoration)? Paranoid+incompetent, that’s a bit too much.
Purchased a new mac yesterday, tried to use Photoshop CS4 from an external hard drive, got the licensing error. Command line trick worked a treat, kudos to Erik for finding this but Adobe need to get their act together and provide a dmg that actually works for Lion.