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.
–
I just noticed that this process dumped a folder named “AdobeLicensingFilesBackup” into my Home folder. So, be aware of that.
–
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
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
123 Comments
Deleting /Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher worked for me! Thanks
For a lot of windows users this error might be caused by ‘FLEXnet Licensing Service’ being disabled in the ‘services.msc’ in windows.
Start search box>services.msc>FLEXnet Licensing Service>right click>startup type: automatic [or auto (D.S)]
If you dont have this service you need to re-download your product.
Thanks! That was the problem.
Thanks, deleting these two files worked for me. :)
Tnx i have been looking for an alternative rather uninstalling all again
Thanks for this…Deleting the file really worked for me.
Instead of reinstalling (grabbing the box, installing and waiting for the install to finish…), a task I wouldn’t have patience for especially today, I just went and deleted the FLEXnet Publisher folder from the Preferences folder (/Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher). That solved the issue. I’m happy again.
Fantastic, deleting the Flexnet and Cache.db worked. I was about to pull my hair out with this one! Thanks for the post, really appreciate it.
sorry but could some one let me know where to look for the library folder to begin with? Ive done a search on my computer for FLEX and havent found the file please help!!!!! ?????? many thanks
Deleting /Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher worked for me too ! Thanks ALOT !!!
Thanks. Deleting the Library/Preferences/FLEXnet Publisher folder solved it for me.
Of course, I have the right things on /etc/hosts – and I am assuming you want that there to avoid it happening again… No more phoning home…
My IT guy migrated me to a new Macbook running Snow Leopard. I have done all these steps above multiple times and cannot launch anything but CS4 PS Extended. Every other CS4 app just gives me the error. And now I can’t even do a clean install because Adobe says you have to first UNINSTALL CS3 and 4 using their Uninstall app app; when I try to run the uninstall for CS3 and CS$ it says there’s a problem in the database. So my university has thrown away thousands of dollars because I can’t use CS4 on my new MacBook (yes we have CS5, but what if someone I need to send files to doesn’t have it? and I use CS5 only filters or effects in Illustrator?) This is totally ridiculous. We have literally a dozen or more valid licenses but can’t use the software we paid for.
One Trackback
[...] will perfom the steps suggested by Erik’s Brain and Jake’s Computer Blog. After completing these steps, you will need to re-enter your serial [...]