Question

Elements 12 - Not a valid Serial Number

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
December 20, 2025
2 replies
153 views

I was bought "Adobe Photoshop Elelments 12 and Premiere Elements 12" a few years ago as a christmas present. Due to personal circumstances i was unable to use it at the time. I have now come to use it and i am getting a "Serial Number not Valid" error message when i try to install it. The box has always been in my possession and seals unbroken so i know the serial number not been used else where. The srial number begins with a 1057.

I would appreciate any advice that will help me install it ot even or even check the code is correct.

Problem or error

Community Expert

Community Expert

If it was purchased from BestBuy, some of their Elements programs came with a 10 year license that began on the date of purchase.

Legend

Your software is over 13 years old, that's one of the problems. Don't get your hopes up.

Try this (it's from a chat from 10 years ago)

Seems like your machine is not able to communicate to adobe activation server. Could you give it a shot to see if it helps-

Open a Finder window. Choose Go > Go To Folder.

Type /etc (make sure that you're is logged in as an administrator).

Select the hosts file and open it.

Look for any entries that refer to activate.adobe.com and delete them. For example, 127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com and delete it.

Save the file and close it. Now launch the application.