Did Adobe shut off the activation server for Adobe CS6 products? I haven't been able to install anything lately. It keeps saying my serial number is invalid. I've tried all of the solutions listed here Error: "The serial number is not valid for this product" | Adobe Creative Suite, and nothing works on multiple computers with multiple network connections over multiple days. At this point, I'm pretty sure the problem is on Adobe's side.
OK. I spent some serious time looking through installer logs like PDapp.log and Oobelib.log, and using various tools like Process Explorer to see exactly what the installer was doing and at what step it failed. I'm pretty sure I found out the root cause of the failure. Basically, the connection with the activation server uses either TLS 1.1 or 1.2 which some older operating systems don't support. You can patch up Windows XP if you don't mind your using POSReady updates. Windows Vista and 7 need the latest services packs AND all Windows Updates installed and maybe some registry hacks on top of that.
You can work around all of this by using the Adobe Provisioning Toolkit Enterprise Edition found on the Creative Suite Enterprise Deployment page. Using a "Type 1" exception, you can activate your license on another computer or with a browser that supports TLS 1.2 (like Firefox or Chrome) by generating a response code and going to the following page: Offline Activation
This has been a long journey (including an interesting encounter with someone who tried to trick me into turning over my serial number). I would like thank everyone in the forum who replied. Your responses helped narrow down the problem which I appreicate. I still have some choice words for Adobe support which I'll keep to myself.
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