Illustrator CS3 13.0.2 update failed to install

Well, as a Christmas Eve present, here is something I remembered later which may also help, Ronald, and also Cathy et al.

By the way, there are other threads like this one, and often enough the bad/missing permissions for Registry entries turns out to be the problem. I just happened to run across one looking for something else.

What I remembered is this. The original installation of CS3 didn't work the first time. I was able to get it to succeed, by forcing non-microsoft services and startup applications not to run while I did the installation.

Naturally I disconnected the internet (including wireless) completely before trying any of this, as all my firewall and virus protection would be removed by rebooting without those services. Otherwise you are almost sure to get one of the prevelant worms/viruses or worse - generally in a few seconds (yes, it's that bad out there).

I had posted pseudo-instructions here, but took them out, as I think they are too dangerous even at that level, unless you know exactly what you are doing. If not, find someone who does. I think there may be procedures actually in some of the Adobe material, but again, not for anyone who doesn't understand precisely.

Anyway, my theory now is that virus protection is what prevented the first install completing correctly, and left badly permissioned registry entries. Those bad permissions led to later updater failures, as above. It wasn't enough to turn off my virus protection normally - the install still failed, so probably this is a base level of protection.

Why Microsoft doesn't allow their installer to work under Safe Boot, which ties Adobe's hands and would otherwise clean up these issues, is a mystery.

Hope it's some help, whether you also need an expert person to assist appropriately, or not.

And best holiday greetings.

You are lucky to have got 13.0.1 to load correctly as I install it and it does not show as installed 'about Illustrator'. Trying to reinstall it an error message comes up saying it is installed!!!!!

Trying to install 13.0.2 results in a failure to load message.

Have un-install Suite and reinstalled twice and Illustrator several times without resolving the problem. Also the Flashlite update for Device Central will not install!!!!!!!

Have been going round in circles for about a week or so to no avail and I am running XP.

CS3 is a pain in the butt as I had the problem that I could not insatll Illustrator 13 as a previous installation/removal left a font write-protected in the Registry and the install programme could not over-write it.

I would not be surprised if this is the case here or the uninstall has done something similiar??????????????????

Cathy, I would look at those log files, yes, as it should give a clue at least from the failure message.

I had some idea about your 3d problem, and went looking on the Illustrator product page. I think maybe my idea wasn't right, as Vista is apparently certified ok for Illustrator (normal 32 bit machines). But I did come across some 'Top Support Issues' at the bottom of the page, which may give a clue what is going wrong with updaters for so many people.

The link is below, but the key is that updaters will apparently fail if you moved or removed _anything_ from the original installation. They give the example of having trashed the Readme file, but it could be anything.

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=332379&sliceId=2

The fix is to use the original program installer (standalone Illustrator if you have that, or the CS3 installer) to reinstall the program. They say you may have to remove it first, and give the procedure to remove and reinstall only that one program by careful use of the CS3 installer. Then you should be able to update, or so it says.

I hope this may turn out to help George or Gary above also.

Yes, Adobe should do better. Again I wonder about offshore creators of installers, who can 'follow rules' but may not use good judgement. The installers look technically correct to a good degree, but are not friendly to end-users as they should be. More good work needed, to make the process adaptive - at very least to have it give accurate error messages pointing to advice to recover.

Back to your 3d rendering issue, Cathy. I can't help but wonder if this is due to Vista, and/or the driver for your display card, which I think does get quite involved with 3d renders if it supposed to have such capabilities. Vista tries to shut the door on older, better ways of doing such things, such as OpenGL. The reasons stated seem to be 'security', which is probably somewhat valid, but one can notice that the road to Microsoft/Hollywood DRM is also paved this way....

Anyway, I would probably try to be sure you've upgraded to the lastest video driver for your display card. And be prepared to back it out, if that causes other problems.

Kind regards, and again holiday greetings.

One more member of the frustrated updates club. Am running CS3 on Vista on an HP Core 2 Quad with 3 gig of RAM. Illustrator 13.0.1 update won't install - with the "Updater did not Worked" message. Have de-activated, uninstalled, re-installed, re-activated. Pretty much the same chain of events that everyone else has tried - updating from within the app, downloading the update from Adobe, etc. I'll go digging into the log files next. Adobe support was no help at all. Have also had problems with 3-D rendering - Illustrator CS3 just won't do it dependably. I don't need it that capability very often, but I end up going back to CS2 on XP on a different and much older machine, and it works just fine.

FWIW, the latest updater decided not to update flash as well. So if it keeps up, one can only assume that eventually nothing will update.

Very helpful, NarrBL.

My error message is:
"Patcher was unable to verify the checksum before and checksum after of the file to be patched. Patch will fail."

Adobe?

p.s. to see the logs area in the first step, you will have to set 'show hidden files' on your Microsoft folder options.

Ok, guys. This is going to be a bit loose, but may help. It is how I got a failed CS3 update to install. I think but am not sure that the install initially failed due to inadequate free space on one of the relevant partitions. I then believe but am not sure that the retract procedure, which is pretty good in general, messed up the registry 'slightly'.

- first, the 'this installation failed' was driving me insane, of course. So finally I tracked down that there are logs, and where they are. Translating from a German XP, you will find those logs in: C:\Documents and Settings\YourLoginName\Applications Data\Adobe\PatcherLogs. There's one for each of your CS3 applications, and they are in text, so open the one matching your trouble.

- these logs get huge, if you've made multiple tries, as they contain every detail. Search for the word ERROR and you will probably find the point of trouble. Time and date stamps may help to locate an episode. There is also a phrase "Patching fails, Rolling back the changes done by the patcher..." which you can look for, which shows just after the original ERROR. There's another message (improperly?) marked ERROR just after, which comments 'Set status to rollback'.

- Ok, now you can see Adobe's idea why the patcher failed. In my case, it said: "Access denied to the registry key: DeviceCentral.advs\shell\Open\command".

- Well, in Microspeak that is probably pretty clear, to someone. I went looking for that key using Regedit search, helped by the cue a few lines above in the log saying "Regsirty Hive: HKCR". Presumably they meant 'Registry'.

- Obligatory message right now. If you have a log like this, and don't grok the Registry well, and know what you want to do about backups, etc., you should stop before even opening Regedit. Get someone who is very dependable and knowledgeable to do a fix for you. Have complete full reinstall backups. Etc.. Better safe than having to reinstall windows from a wiped disk, all your applications, recover all your precious data from right now where you crashed it, etc.. That valuable client project...

- Anyway, you would know what to do about the one or two key permissions if you are qualified, so would do that. In my case it was two keys which had had their owner (me) permissions completely removed.

- I mention and explain this detail so Adobe can explain it to their likely installer-builders, who seem somehow very likely to be outsourced and offshore. I have directed such groups, and don't envy the process. But something about the unwind procedure I think broke those permissions. And something about the patch procedure didn't preflight to assure there was enough disk space before getting in deep, which is the preventative side of the problem, or so I think. But I think both sides of the problem need to get fixed, unless the unwind failure might have been in an inability to write the registry.

- I will refrain from comments I made at the time which show my length of service ;)

- with all this buried under the layers of 'Automatic updater' activity which really hid any clues, I have to wonder why Adobe doesn't have some method for extracting the failure at least from logs, so this could be given to the support techs.

- I am also wondering just when and if I will truncate that log. After 5 or so tries getting to the root of issue, I now have just one of the logs at the 33MB point...

- all this was about something I will probably not use, or much besides prototyping something for a product design, Device Central. But it is very annoying, not to say concerning about futures of a big expensive and very useful package, CS3, to have repeated big failures in the update mechanism. Good to have run it to ground. And I don't do tech stuff for a long time, which shows the level of concern this caused.

- So, Adobe, please make a better situation for your many and varied 'users'. Thank you.

A nice holiday season to all, long may it last you (into Asian new year).

So far CS3 is a mess for me. Couldn't get the guide bars in PS to auto center like they did in CS2. HD crash, reinstalled, guide bars worked. Did an adobe update, guides stopped auto centering again.

Was anyone hurt in this wreck?

I tried this update Adobe's way. It didn't install. I followed Adobe's instructions. They didn't work. I tried Francisco's way. It didn't work for me. So I tried the update Adobe's way. It didn't install. I followed Adobe's instructions. They didn't work. I tried Francisco's way. It didn't work for me. So I tried the update Adobe's way. It didn't install. I followed Adobe's instructions. They didn't work. I tried Francisco's way. It didn't work for me. So . . . . <recursively continuing><br /><br />You get the idea.<br /><br />How long as this update been available? And it still doesn't install properly? This is unprofessional.<br /><br />Adobe! You're a major software corporation. The updates of the better major software corporations download and install. Period. End of discussion. No reinstalls. No meaningless error messages.<br /><br />We're busy users of your products. Please provide an update that will download and install.<br /><br />Thanks.