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Participant
August 19, 2025
Question

Unable to Install and Activate CS5 on new Windows 11 PC

  • August 19, 2025
  • 2 replies
  • 1125 views

I've designed websites for small businesses for the past 15 years and have used Photoshop to support this work. I originally purchased a Photoshop CS4 Extended license then upgraded to CS5 Photoshop a few years later. I have been using the single Photoshop CS5 license for over 10 years and have installed it on many different PC's and on as many as 3 different PC's at any given time, with never any issues. Up until a month ago, all my PC's have been running Windows 10. So because support for Windows 10 is stopping in a few months I thought it would be best to upgrade to Windows 11, at least on my main business computer that supports my website business. Unfortunately, it turned out that this hardware was incompatible with a Windows 11 upgrade so I decided to purchase a new Windows 11 PC from Dell instead. So during the configuration of this new business PC, I started installing and configuring my applications, including Photoshop CS5. Again, there wasn't any problem with this installation. However, because of other issues regarding Windows 11, I had to do a Windows reset that then required me to re-install all my applications again. Unfortunately, when I tried to re-install Photoshop CS5 again, I got the warning that my Photoshop CS5 could not be activated stating that; 1) I had more than 2 installations and 2) I had exceeding the maximum number of installations allowed. I tried deactivating the installation on my old Windows 10 PC but I still got the same warning that stated that I already had more thn 2 active installations. I find this entire problem very frustrating since; 1) I was never made aware of any of these installation limitations, 2) that support for Photoshop was ending, and 3) I had a working installation of Photoshop CS5 on my new PC prior to doing the Windows 11 reset.  I read that the CS5 activation servers are still active and that an activation reset would be possible but since there is no longer support for Photoshop CS5 it seems there is no one knowledgeable to do this. Had I been made aware of these activation limitations and end-of-life I could could have made different decisions and could have avoided this problem.  And since I mainly use Photoshop now very infrequently and only for support of legacy website designs, it is very impractical to purchase a new license that may only be used a few times a year. So it was suggested that I post my issue here to see if there are any reasonable resolutions to this problem.

2 replies

davescm
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 21, 2025

Adobe CS5 went on sale in 2010, and was replaced by CS5.5 in 2011. All Creative Suite products reached 'end of life' in 2019, meaning that they are no longer supported. What that means is defined in these docs.
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/support/programs/eol-matrix.html

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/support/programs/support-periods.html

 

Dave

 

davescm
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 19, 2025

Photoshop CS5 can still be activated, provided activations remain. It can be active on two machines at any time. In practice, that means that it must be deactivated on an old PC before activating on a new PC. Unfortunately, there is no way around this and Adobe no longer reset activations.

Dave

Participant
August 20, 2025

That's what I was told by Adobe support but it is not true or at least it didn't work for me. As I stated in my original post, I was able to install Photoshop successfully on my new PC even though that meant I had 3 installations at that time. When I had to reset my Windows 11 installation and even de-activating Photoshop on my old PC, which essentially means I have only one installation now, I still can't install Photoshop. I have had more than 3 active installations in the past so that is not true based upon my experience. This must be a policy change that was made by Adobe some years ago but was never communicate to licensed users. Now I'm stuck!

D Fosse
Community Expert
Community Expert
August 20, 2025

No idea what happened there, but you only get two activations and a third has never been possible. This has not changed since activation was introduced in the original CS (version 8).

 

What's new now is that Adobe will not reset if the two allowed slots are used and have not been deactivated. You absolutely have to deactivate at least one of the two before you can activate a third.