Lightroom 6 perpetual license – activation limit reached although no devices are activated

Hello,

I hope someone here can help me with an activation problem with my old Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6 perpetual license.

I purchased Lightroom 6 as a perpetual license years ago. The product was registered to my Adobe account on February 12, 2016, and it is still listed in my Adobe account as a registered product.

I am now trying to install and use Lightroom 6 again on a Windows 11 PC.

However, Lightroom reports:

“The serial number has already been used on the maximum number of computers allowed.”

It asks me either to deactivate another computer or enter another serial number.

The strange part

I have already signed out/deactivated Lightroom on my old computers and removed some of the old installations.

When I check my Adobe account, “Activated devices” shows no activated devices at all.

So I have a legitimately purchased and registered Lightroom 6 license, but Lightroom still reports that the activation limit has been reached.

What I have tried

• Used my original Lightroom 6 serial number.
• Used the original Adobe-signed Lightroom_6_LS11.exe installer.
• Uninstalled and reinstalled Lightroom 6 several times.
• Tried installing with the Internet connection disabled.
• Tried the available offline-activation procedures.
• Tried the Creative Cloud Desktop workaround mentioned in some older Adobe Community posts.
• Checked the Adobe SLStore and SLCache folders.
• Restored the original Adobe licensing folders after testing.
• I also checked the registry, but did not modify the licensing information.

If I rename/remove the local SLStore/SLCache, Lightroom produces Error 16. After restoring them, Lightroom goes back to the original “activation limit reached” message.

Interestingly, during today's installation attempts, Lightroom/Adobe created or updated licensing files in:

C:\ProgramData\Adobe\SLStore

I also found an old hard drive

I still have an old hard drive from a previous computer. It contains historical Adobe/Lightroom files, including an old 227434509.lic file and Lightroom 6 installation logs for versions 6.0 through 6.4.

The old Windows installation itself is no longer complete, so Lightroom cannot simply be started from that drive.

I also have an old Windows 7 laptop in the household which may have had Lightroom installed in the past, although we currently don't have the Windows password.

My question

Is there still a legitimate way to reset or recover an activation for a Lightroom 6 perpetual license when the Adobe account shows no activated devices, but Lightroom still reports that the activation limit has been reached?

Is the offline Request Code / Response Code activation method still available for Lightroom 6 in this situation?

Or is there any way for Adobe to reset the activation count for a legitimately purchased Lightroom 6 license?

I simply want to use the Lightroom 6 license that I purchased and registered with Adobe.

Any advice from someone who has successfully activated Lightroom 6 on a newer Windows 10/11 system would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!