How do I activate Adobe Photoshop CS3? [CS3 is dead]

[roberth51165490]

How do I activate Adobe Photoshop CS3 after not using for 4 years?

[Jon Fritz]

The CS3 Activation servers have been taken down. You can still get CS3 working on your machine, but you will have to follow this link and complete all the steps there: https://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/activation-fails-cs3-acrobat-8.html

[Nancy OShea]

If you have any problems, see the correct answer in this discussion for additional tips.

Re-activating CS3 (Updated)

[EstherRlena]

It happened to me too.  When you run the latest window's update it sends you that message.   I think it's their way of getting you to go strictly online which I am opposed to.   I bought and paid for my CS3 so why should I have to give it up because they no longer support it?  I simply rolled back my windows update to the last time my photoshop  worked.   That did the trick.   You may lose your browser though so I had to reinstall it but hey...at least I got my photoshop back my way and from on...no more windows updates for this computer.   Try it, it works better than all the links that I tried as well and got me nowhere.   Hope this helps another frustrated photoshop owner.

@

[Jon Fritz]

EstherRlena  wrote

It happened to me too.  When you run the latest window's update it sends you that message.   I think it's their way of getting you to go strictly online which I am opposed to.   I bought and paid for my CS3 so why should I have to give it up because they no longer support it?

CS3 is over a decade old and the activation server was taken down last year. Not for any nefarious "we'll force them to buy into CC" reasoning though, it's simply old and probably not worth expending the resources to continue maintenance on the server. Adobe has made an offline-activated version of the software to download that is identical in every way, except for the activation method. If you have a valid CS3 activation code, there's nothing stopping you from using the software.

I'm very surprised Windows hasn't killed everything that old though. It usually take a lot less time than 11-12 years for an OS change to disable legacy versions of existing software. We've actually been pretty lucky so far with most Adobe products continuing to function through all the Windows OS versions starting in XP, then going to Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and now 10.

[davescm · Accepted solution]

Note - it is now 2020 and both the activation servers and the non-activation versions of CS1 to CS3 are no longer available.

Dave