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Adobe Acrobat etc Requires Activation (Again)

Adobe applications, most notably Acrobat Pro 7+, suddenly started asking me to re-activate the license. My work is totally interrupted by this nonsense. I need to consider some non-Adobe alternatives.

Two activations and an Adobe app refuses to activate without purchase of another license. So, without warning, today I can't use Photoshop, Acrobat, or Audition. This doesn't seem to affect my Illustrator, and I haven't tried to launch InDesign or Premier yet.

This apparently happens when a major change is made to the OS or hard drive, and the Adobe activation data file gets corrupted. The activated applications are not usable after their 2 activations are used up.

I called Adobe (in the "No More Activations" dialog, click "Activation Options" or "Phone Activation" and there's a 24-hour toll-free phone number there) when Audition crashed. They activated it for me over the phone.

I called an hour later when Acrobat Pro crashed. They said there is a patch, but they have to e-mail it to me. They took my name, address, county, phone, and e-mail address.

Getting the patch takes 24-48 hours. In the meantime, I can't use Acrobat.

I haven't changed my hard drive or my OS, but I strongly suspect a Microsoft Windows Update (which is automatic on my system). Yesterday morning my PC said Microsoft updated it and had to reboot.

Labels: acrobat, activate, activation, adobe, license, photoshop, technology, windows

posted by Blog Owner @ 4/10/2007