Error 16 + No Serial Numbers + Not registered with Adobe - HOWEVER programs still on Apple Mac.

[Garry Maclean]

Hi there,

I’m just wondering if anyone can assist or can offer advice as to where to look.

Apologies in advance if this is a long read.

I’ve been working on my hobby website, on and off since 2014, using Dreamweaver & Photoshop CS6, which I’m aware are old school nowadays.

My problems began last December, 2022, after I had upgraded from High Sierra to Mojave, the upgrade was to enable some other app which required a higher OS than High Sierra. I had previously googled as to whether CS6 was compatible with Mojave and the first answer I found unfortunately said it was - I have since discovered they are not compatible.

The problem I encountered was that although I could still access and use Dreamweaver I could no longer upload the updated page files to my server.

I then purchased a 2 TB SSD to back up everything as I had read that one option was to “downgrade” to High Sierra.

Many issues followed as I soon encountered problems such as being told that there was already a newer OS installed. I eventually went back to Mavericks (Internet Recovery Re-Boot) which my Mac shipped with. Over the next extremely stressful few days - including my mac showing what looked like a white “No Entry Sign” - I have somehow managed to stumble my way to having High Sierra as my OS and The Machine back ups to before Mavericks, when I was running Mojave.

I’ve used Time Machine to restore the Adobe CS6 products but I now have come up against Error 16.

CONFIGURATION ERROR

Please uninstall and reinstall the product.

If this problem still occurs, please contact Adobe technical support for help, and mention the error code shown at the bottom of this screen.

Error: 16

http://www.adobe.com/support/

The problem now escalates somewhat as whilst I purchased the proper packaged printed disks with serial numbers and licence etc., from memory for something in the £800 to £1,000 mark from a retailer I cannot now recall, I also failed to register with Adobe, yep I know, big  .  .  Doh!

I still have the boxes and disks.

Having googled extensively I now appreciate I am in something of a pickle to put it mildly.

I am encountering Error 16 which states I should uninstall/re-install but without the Serial Numbers this I cannot do.

There appears to be a few different apps available that claim to be able to locate the serial numbers from within the mac.

This is a genuine and honest enquiry regarding having legitimately purchased the items so they were input to my Mac at some point, most likely circa 2014.

Does anyone know if these supposed “key finders” actually work ?

https://mac-product-key-finder.com/

They seem to cost about $29 which from where I am would be something of a bargain.

Any assistance and/or suggestions gratefully received.

Many thanks.

Kind regards, Garry.

[Garry Maclean]

Whilst my email address has remained constant throughout just recently I have been renewing and writing down some of my passwords, historically they have all been very similar hence the changes.

Presumably during one of these password renewal/changes I somehow recorded/overwrote a new password by mistake.

It's possible/probable that I have arrived at a change of password area and changed my password without realising I perhaps somehow already had a previous Adobe account with a different password.

Now to access my Adobe.Acount where my CS6 items are registered the password is simply not the same as the password required to access https://exception.licenses.adobe.com/aoes/aoes/v1/t1?locale=en

Whilst I can access both individually is it possible that they cannot relate to each other and when I am sent to https://exception.licenses.adobe.com/aoes/aoes/v1/t1?locale=en  to validate etc.,  when I arrive there, there is no connection or link to my Adobe. Account where my CS6 products are registered ?

I will try to find out how to revert to a single password.

Thanks for your help kglad.

[kglad]

do you have two different adobe accounts both with the same adobe id, but with different passwords?  ie, can you sign-in here with different passwords:

https://account.adobe.com

[Garry Maclean]

This is what I have been trying to highlight in earlier posts above  .  .  .

Negative regarding my ability to sign in to https://account.adobe.com using BOTH passwords.

Although the email address is the same for both accounts.

I can only sign in with one password - let's call it A-B-C - using it I can sign in and access my account and see the CS6 registration details.

I recognise this A-B-C password as being an historic/original password.

However when I'm going through all of the various earlier tried/suggested procedures - "activation", "request code", "response code" etc., etc., and arrive at my Adobe sign in window that same password - A-B-C- is incorrect.

Bizarrely, in my recently updated password list I find I have TWO passwords for my Adobe accounts - no idea why - the normal one mentioned above and a different one entirely, I can only access the "activation", "request code", "response code" sign in when using the second password, lets's call it X-Y-Z.

When I arrive at this "activation", "request code", "response code" sign in and enter my email address it is only the X-Y-Z password that is accepted.

I'm wondering, as in my earlier post,  whether this might be causing a break down in communications for want of a better phrase ?

 

[Garry Maclean]

So in effect, the password I am using for https://account.adobe.com through which I access

my account below and see my CS6 products registered  .  .  .

 

Is not the password I have to use to access the likes of these  >>>

https://exception.licenses.adobe.com/aoes/aoes/v1/t1?locale=en

https://aoes-stage.licensingstack.com/aoes/aoes/v1/imsauthstatus

[Garry Maclean]

This is the sign in page for https://account.adobe.com

 

Whilst the sign in page for the "sign in", "validation", "activation" etc.,  looks like this -

<removed-kglad>

 

They share the same email address but require different passwords to access them.

<removed-kglad>

[kglad]

i removed those screenshots because it's not a good idea to advertise your email address.

can you update from high sierra to mojave so you can retry online activation.  i don't know that anything will change but i can't see any benefit to trying offline activation.

[Garry Maclean]

Will try tomorrow kglad

Thankyou

[kglad]

ok. 

and i'm getting discouraged and thinking @Nancy OShea  is correct - and i don't even know if she's commented on this thread, but if she has, i know what her comment would be: it's time to upgrade from out-of-date software to up-to-date software.

[Garry Maclean]

Yeah, I'm heading in the same direction   :o(   it's been a hard slog, many thanks for sticking with it up until now.

Because my original question/post had long since morphed into something almost unrecognisable from its original form I also posted this  .  .  .

Genuine Adobe CS6 Dreamweaver and Photoshop - “Invalid Serial Numbers” . . . Help !

Nancy has offered advice and given me a fair amount of assistance and suggestions in reply which I will try and work through.

Although I've tried most of the suggestions there as well  .  .  .  without success.

I'll keep trying for a day or two yet.

Many thanks for all your kind efforts, suggestions and support, truly amazing !

Kindest regards, Garry.

[kglad]

i think most of her comments re: legacy software like cs6 is going to consist of links and encouragement to update everything -  your computer and your software.

[Peru Bob]

I’ve used Time Machine to restore the Adobe CS6 products but I now have come up against Error 16.

CONFIGURATION ERROR

Please uninstall and reinstall the product.

By @Garry Maclean

Unfortunately, Adobe apps won't be ported properly using Time Machine.

They need to have a proper installation from discs or the correct installation files.

[Garry Maclean]

Hi Peru Bob,

Thanks for input, I've moved on from that particular aspect of the issues I'm experiencing.

I've now reformatted my iMac Hard Drive, installed the OS that it shipped with, Mavericks, and then upgraded the OS to High Sierra.

My iMac is now cleaned/cleared of any Adobe files/apps but I continue to have ongoing connection/validation difficulties - please sea later post updates.

Many thanks,

Kind regards, Garry.

[Peru Bob]

I realize that CS6 is no longer supported, but just as a long shot, did you try contacting Adobe support?

[Garry Maclean]

Going by what others here and elsewhere have reported, that avenue is unlikely to be a worthwhile venture sadly.

[Garry Maclean]

As all who have contributed and read this post will be aware I had all but given up on ever regaining full use of my Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS6 applications.

Having yesterday morning tried yet another re-format of my hard drive and yet another re-install of Mavericks followed by yet another upgrade to High Sierra I had finally reached the end of the road.

However  .  .  .  in the early afternoon I found myself yet again looking around trying to figure out if I’d missed something and came across the “live chat” option with Adobe.

Apologies here to those who suggested reaching out to Adobe earlier - "Peru Bob" - but having read on several occasions from other contributors how that option had proved - for them - to be an entirely futile exercise I hadn’t seriously considered it as being worthwhile.

How wrong was I  ?

At this stage nothing ventured nothing gained so I started an online chat with an Adobe agent. 

The exceptionally helpful and friendly agent first off requested permission to take control of my iMac “remotely” and asked me to remove all personal files from my desktop - which I agreed to - and he then went about his business with the trackpad pointer whizzing about my iMac like something possessed, occasionally showing me with the trackpad pointers where and when he required me to input passwords.

Within 15 to 20 minutes he had sorted everything and I now have both Dreamweaver and Photoshop CS6 functioning perfectly !

Somewhere at the back of my mind was the spectre - however unlikely it had seemed - that my Serial Numbers were somehow “bogus” and that was why after inputting them I was repeatedly told they were incorrect, invalid or could not be validated.

However he was also able to confirm that both my Serial Numbers were, as he put it “good to go” should I ever require to input them again in the future, although  .  .  .   I will be in no hurry to test that  ;o)

Though it was not myself that weaved the magic that he weaved I did watch what he was doing as best I could, however it was all done at speed with files opened, clicked and closed rapidly, I can report very little of what I saw.

I was/am in High Sierra in a late 2013 iMac.

He downloaded the appropriate installers and certainly went through this terminal workaround  https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-cloud/kb/install-creative-suite-mac-os-sierra.html for each application.

The rest was just a whirlwind of the many windows I’d become all too familiar with over the past few weeks.

He left behind in my downloads folder, the .dmg files for -

Dreamweaver CS6

Photoshop CS6

JavaFor MacOSX 2017-001

Adobe Applications Manager Installer

I can only offer my heartfelt thanks to all those who assisted with advice and encouragement along the way  .  .  .  many, many thanks folks  .  .  .   your willingness to take the time and trouble to assist others is truly amazing  !

The end result is that both Dreamweaver and Photoshop are now installed, restored and function as they should.

However  .  .  .

Yet further questions will undoubtedly follow as I strive to become “reunited” with my website  .  .  .  

I now have an empty Dreamweaver application.

I am not certain which layout I used way back 10+ years ago although I think it was 3 column liquid + header and footer.

Although I have all my website files, pictures etc., etc., backed up and accessible, when I ask my website hosts to download the web page files etc., will they have to match passwords, root folder names etc., etc., all of which are now gone.

Any advice from here, yet again, as to how to proceed is greatly appreciated.

Kindest Regards, Garry.

[kglad]

wow. i don't know what to say except adobe support is very inconsistent.

do you know if they used online activation?  (and you have confirmed both apps are activated, correct?)

[Garry Maclean]

"WOW" indeed kglad, can hardly believe it myself !

Regarding your question as to whether both apps are actitivated  .  .  .  when I launch Photoshop and go to the "Help" option along the very top the option to "deactivate" is shown in black text and therefore is allowing you to deactivate should you wish to.

With Dreamweaver things are different, the "deactivation" option is shown in grey signifying the deactivation is not an available option with my Dreamweaver app.

I was concerned enough to revisit Adobe Help this evening and just by chance got the same agent that assisted me yesterday.

;o)

When I then enquired as to why the deactivate option was greyed out I received this reply  .  .  .

"Garry, I wish I could help you with that but CS6 Volume license is an older and out of technical support version, there is no technical support available for it, yesterday I helped you with the product activation which is under my support boundaries, hope you understand that."

I replied  .  .  .

"I appreciate that CS6 is no longer supported ZZZZ and greatly appreciate your assistance yesterday. My concern is that after your activation assistance one application allows "deactivation" whereas the other does not. Might this mean that the application not allowing "deactivation" - Dreamweaver - could possibly NOT be active and perhaps only useable in short term "trial" mode ?"

Reply was  .  .  .

"The Dreamweaver CS6 Volume license is a very old version and it does not allow deactivation, as you can see Photoshop allowed but Dreamweaver will not."

Regarding your question kglad as to whether he/she used "OFFLINE ACTIVATION"

I do clearly recall seeing the Adobe agent at these windows so presumanly he/she used Offline Activation.

At one point in the proceedings I also briefly saw a window stating my Serial Number(s) had been "Validated", not exactly sure where that was though as things were moving pretty fast.

[kglad]

thank you for all that information. (and as long ad there's no clickable "activate option, your apps are activated.)