Migration from old mac to new

Forum|Forum|10 hours ago
April 20, 2026
4 replies
15 views

Hi Adobe,

Seven years ago I bought a refurbished MacBook Pro from Mac of all Trades. It was a replacement for a 2015 MBP that was starting to fail. At the time I backed it up and when I got the New (refurbished) MBP The old Mac was still working so I used the Migration function to copy everything over to the refurbished one and everything worked!

I bought the Creative Suite waaaay back in 2003-ish, I think, at Macworld and have continued to upgrade all the way up the CS 5.5. Been using it ever since on my MBP. I continue to use it even after Abode discontinued support of it.

My wife and I have moved from Boston, to San Francisco and now Oregon and somewhere along the way my original CD-ROMs (or DVDs?!) have become lost.

I may be misremembering but when I first migrated from my original MBP to the 2015 running Snow Leopard, I think, everything transferred over and I’ve been running PS 5.5 all along. I’ve been told that v5.5 will still run on Mojave BUT that I would need to have the original serial number, but they’re gone.

Here’s the question. If I remove the hard drive from my current 2015 MBP and put it into another refurbished MBP (maybe a 2019 running Mohave) will PS 5.5 run? Or is there some motherboard magic going on that would prevent me from firing up ?

OR… will simple migration transfer ALL that’s needed ???

Thanks

G

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GoodBird

John T Smith

Community Expert

Adobe support will no longer reset an activation count for any serial number program... if you
can't DE-activate (lost or crashed computer) and you are receiving an 'activation limit reached' message there is no solution... AND the activation server for CS4 and earlier has been removed from service, so those versions will not activate at all... IF you have an activation left (each program has 2) CS5 & CS5.5 & CS6 will still activate (nobody knows how long that will last)

Log in to your Adobe account and click this link https://account.adobe.com/products

IF you registered and your serial number is there it won’t do any good without your discs

kglad

Community Expert

previous posters @jane-e and @leo.r are incorrect: the activation servers for cs5, cs5.5 and cs6 all still function.

however, activation will fail if you move your hard drive from one computer to another. migration usually (but not always) fails.

if you registered your cs.5.5, you can check your account to find your serial number. when activating it, you may find an excess activation count problem because of failure to deactivate previous installations. here’s more info about that, https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/activation-limit-reached-for-non-subscription-adobe-desktop-applications/td-p/14804413?linkId=100000376554410

jane-e

Community Expert

@George719 wrote: If I remove the hard drive from my current 2015 MBP and put it into another refurbished MBP (maybe a 2019 running Mohave) will PS 5.5 run?

The activation servers have been shut down and no longer exist. You won’t be able to activate CS5.5, released 15 years ago in 2011.

Jane

leo.r

Community Expert

You won’t know until you actually try that hard drive transfer, and the results are unpredictable. The activation servers for CS 5.5 are not maintained anymore (or are disconnected entirely). There’s no guaranteed way of running CS 5.5 under any circumstances.

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