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davids16574943
Known Participant
June 16, 2025
Question

Installing Adobe Photoshop version 6.0 upgrade on Windows 11 [subject edited for clarity]

  • June 16, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 2778 views

I have an original 3.5" floppy disk set for Photoshop 3.0 that I originally installed on a PC in 1997.

And from that also loaded (in 2011?) via a CS5 UPGRADE CDROM onto another later but now gone HP Windows Vista computer I upgraded to CS5 with a CDROM I had bought and still have with documentation. Recall having to work with Adobe customer support for some reason I don't recall the reason for to actually get that to load.

 

After that HP Windows Vista computer motherboard died 3+ years ago, I was able to load via a CS6 UPGRADE CDROM I purchased as a second device onto a 2016 Dell Windows 10 laptop.  Unfortunately  that laptop recently became unbootable due to a corrupted boot sector I will in the future bring down to a computer service with special software capable of rebuilding a few corrupt address on its hard drive. Thus cannot at this point disable the Adobe license since it cannot be booted.  I still have the HP Windows Vista computer hard drive that I potentially could access given a connector interface at a computer service shop.

 

When I try to directly load the Photoshop CS6 software on my new HP Omen 35L Windows 11 desktop system with the CS6 UPGRADE CDROM it asked to install a previous version CDROM so I installed the above noted CS5 UPGRADE CDROM. However it would not install Photoshop because it didn't detect a valid Adobe 4.0+ full path probably because the CS5 CDROM was an upgrade and not the full licensed media.  The Setup program doesn't ask for serial numbers or product keys and rather just wants to see the media. I vaguely recall that was why I had to work with Adobe previously. This time, Adobe customer support probably won't bother.  

 

So hoping for advice I haven''t considered.  

 

Of course, Adobe wants old hold outs like this person to upgrade to their CC subscription model that I may be forced to.  Functionally for my purposes, I've been fine running CS6.

 

David

2 replies

John Waller
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 16, 2025
quoteprobably because the CS5 CDROM was an upgrade and not the full licensed media. 
By @davids16574943

 

That shouldn't matter. I always upgraded using the serial number from the earlier version upgrade as a qualifying serial number.

 

So when I installed CS6 as an upgrade, I entered the CS6 upgrade serial number then the CS5 upgrade serial number. That's all it took. There was no need to insert the CS5 DVD.

 

Both full version and upgrade DVDs included the full programme code. The serial number was all that mattered for licensing.

davids16574943
Known Participant
June 17, 2025

Expect the issue is that I don't yet have a valid previous version loaded onto my new Windows 11 HP Omen 35L desktop despite trying to verify the Adobe media choice action with my UPGRADE CS5 CDROM. As related above, both old computers I had Photoshop are no longer bootable. 

 

 

 

 

davids16574943
Known Participant
June 17, 2025

Note I do have some CS5 back-ups from my old computer Program Files (x86) folder on USB media that I could just copy into my new computer's hard drive and then try to use the second verification option above.  In any case, don't understand why using the CS5 UPGRADE CDROM didn't work and that may be why when I loaded CS6 onto my Dell laptop I had to receive phone help from Adobe customer service for unknown reasons in order to get that to install.  It may be something related to the specific product media?

kglad
Community Expert
Community Expert
June 16, 2025

i've never heard of needing to install a previous version in order to install an upgrade.  you just the previous version's serial number (and the upgrade's serial number) when trying to activate the upgrade.