Acrobat Pro X "not authentic" after move to larger hard drive - how to fix?

[jerry8955]

I outgrew the original hard drive on my laptop (Windows 7), so I cloned the drive and moved the contents to a larger drive. The process seemed to go without any trouble, and the OS and all Office, Photoshop, CAD, etc. software all ran without any issues, that is except for Acrobat Pro X which is now displaying a "not authentic" pop up (it is authentic as I hold the retail box and DVD in my hand). Other than the annoying pop-up, it seems to run ok.

"Repair installation" did not fix the problem. Figuring that there must be some hidden activation check file that ties to the hard drive ID, I thought the fix would be a deactivation on the old drive, followed by a reactivation on the new drive, at least that seems to be where the troubleshooting online help points to.

I put the old drive back into my laptop, Acrobat Pro X starts and runs without problem no pop-up message warning, so it is still good. Per the active / deactivate help instructions, I looked for the deactivate sub-menu under the "Help" menu item, but there is no such menu item. It is there for Photoshop, but not Acrobat Pro ... do I simply uninstall it on the old drive? Is there some utility needed to move the license activation (like some CAD software uses)? Did Adobe disable activation on their more recent products like they did a few years ago with older versions of CS? Is the pop-up just a bug for which there is a patch fix?

Thanks in advance for any ideas to avoid doing a complete uninstall / re-install, or worse, having to buy a new version of Acrobat Pro when the old version works just fine for my present needs.

[YatharthS]

Hi jerry8955 ,

Please refer to this article for Deactivation help :- Learn to activate or deactivate Adobe applications

Then please use this download link for Acrobat Pro X  :- Download Pro or Standard versions of Acrobat DC, XI, or X

Using this link you may locate your serial number :- Find your Adobe product serial number quickly

Let me know if it works .

Regards,

Yatharth

[jerry8955]

Hi, thanks but that is one of the articles I had already looked at, but it didn't help my situation. I am very familiar with the install / activate / deactivate processes, but only if they work as advertised. My issue seems to be a bug in the software ... I have the latest update installed as well.

To clarify, the "deactivate" menu item is not simply grayed-out, it is completely missing. I have also opened a PDF file from within Acrobat Pro, made sure it was connected to the internet, and waited, but there is still no deactivate item displaying.

I don't need to download Acrobat, I have the DVD and the serial number, I just want to make sure that I can get this fixed without having to remove and clean out all my Adobe software and reinstall like happened to me a few years ago with a similar Photoshop issue.

[YatharthS]

Hi,

Please uninstall the program from the machine you no longer need to work with & reinstall the program on the other machine,

If any issue persist please go to this link Contact Customer Care​ so that chat representative may help you using tools .

Regards,

Yatharth

[jerry8955]

Hi,

Yes, that would be worst-case to re-install, I know that might be a final option. However, it is getting more strange, I checked my desktop computer, and it now has the same pop-up message; "Adobe validation testing has found this copy of Acrobat is not genuine". It had been working fine for the last 3 or 4 years, and today, suddenly the same pop-up happens.

I am allowed to have (2) copies installed to my PCs and use only one at a time, correct?

This is too much of a coincidence; has there been some recent Windows 7 update that might conflicting with Acrobat Pro?

[jerry8955]

I uninstalled Acrobat Pro X from my desktop and then reinstalled it. The "activate / deactivate" sub menu was again showing immediately after the re-install ... it was already showing "deactivate" as the choice, indicating it was already activated. A few minutes later, that menu item disappeared altogether, so just like before except that I have no pop-ups telling me the software "... is not genuine", but this is really annoying ... now I have something like 17 update patches to install ... at least 1 GB worth! Assuming this "fix" holds, I need to repeat the same thing on my laptop ... what a waste of time!

[jerry8955 · Accepted solution]

This should not have been necessary, but I ended up uninstalling, then reinstalling Acrobat Pro X to both my laptop and my desktop, and the software is now running OK. As a precaution, I did not install the last few update patches from Adobe in the event one of those was responsible for the original error.

[YatharthS]

Hi ,

Would like to inform that you may activate license on two machines & you may use them at the same time simultaneously.

If you are getting any error while activating or any other discrepancy then would request you to please 

go to this link Contact Customer Care so that chat representative may help you using tools & check the required details .

Regards,

Yatharth