Silent install and activation of 50x copies of PhotoShop Elements 12 TLP

[HMwkr]

I am trying to deploy a 50-user TLP licence of PSE12 to 50 PCs without having to visit each PC, as was possible with previous versions.

I have the silent install completing without error but the product is not activated, and needs me to sign in with an Adobe ID on each PC. Even once per PC, this is not acceptable for a network install.

Also I note that end users can Sign Out of the Adobe ID thereby deactivatingthe software for all users of the PC, until I revisit and sign in again. And no, we are not going to give all users the Adobe ID credentials. Even before events of the past week

The PSE12 install logs shows "Override files does not exist . Overwrite the value of Override dir to be a blank string" - it is not finding application.xml.override, even though the file is definitely accessible in the right places and is in UTF-8 format.

(In addition, therefore, updates are not suppressed.)

My hunch is that the application.xml.override mechanism has been removed from PSE12 because of the new Adobe ID sign-in requirement?

I'm aware that AMEE is not application to PSE deployment.

I'd be grateful for assistance on this.

Regards

William

[Romsinha-9KMEUt]

Please send me your contact details at romsinha@adobe.com so that I may call you and try to get the issue fixed.

[Eric_D]

I'm also getting the Return Code 14 on this.  It looks like it's working for a few people but not others.  Any other suggestons?

[RyanGSteele]

Can someone please clarify whether the adobe_prtk.exe commands are meant to be run on each client, i.e. as part of an installation script? Or do I somehow serialize the installation media?

Neither the instructions at http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-element-12-silent-install.html or in this thread make this clear.

If, in fact, these commands are meant to be run on each client as part of the install script, how do I programmatically determine whether the activation has completed successfully? If someone can provide a sample installation script which implements some reasonable error handling, that would be helpful.

[Sweden]

RyanGSteele wrote:

Can someone please clarify whether the adobe_prtk.exe commands are meant to be run on each client, i.e. as part of an installation script? Or do I somehow serialize the installation media?

Neither the instructions at http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-element-12-sile nt-install.html or in this thread make this clear.

If, in fact, these commands are meant to be run on each client as part of the install script, how do I programmatically determine whether the activation has completed successfully? If someone can provide a sample installation script which implements some reasonable error handling, that would be helpful.

AFAIK you only need to generate the prov.xml file once. Then when you've installed PSE 12 to a client, run APTEE as follows (on the target machine, as part of your deployment script):

adobe_prtk.exe --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile="prov.xml"

Obviously you need to supply correct paths to aptee executable as well as the prov.xml file.

APTEE returns error level 0 if everything is well, which is good enough for me. I used this to copy a dummy log to the target machine, indicating if activation went well. Batch script example as follows (taken from my mind, might contain errors):

@echo off

"%PROGRAMDATA%\APTEE\adobe_prtk.exe" --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile="%PROGRAMDATA%\APTEE\prov.xml"

if %errorlevel% == 0 copy /y dummylog.log "%PROGRAMDATA%\APTEE\PSE12_APTEE_Status.log"

HTH

Pelle

[RyanGSteele]

Thanks Pelle, that's exactly the info I needed.

For anyone else who is deploying with something like Microsoft System Center 2012 Configuration Manager (SCCM), here's the batch file I used to install and serialize:

 start "Photoshop Elements 12 Setup" /wait "%~dp0setup.exe" /UL1033 /V"SERIALNUMBER=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX COUNTRY=39 NODESKTOPICON=1"
if errorlevel 1 exit /b %errorlevel%
"%~dp0adobe_prtk.exe" --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile="%~dp0prov.xml"
if errorlevel 1 exit /b 1

I just copied the adobe_prtk.exe and the prov.xml into the root of the deployment folder, along with this batch file. Replace the XXXX's with your own serial number, of course. I've added the NODESKTOPICON=1 as we prefer not to have the desktop shortcut created.

The first "if errorlevel" statement will make sure the MSI error code gets returned to the deployment process in case the installation fails for some reason. The second one returns an errorlevel of 1 if the serialization fails for any reason, and I can go chase down the log file if I need further details. (Haven't tested this part so this is all theoretical.)

For those having trouble with automatic updates not being disabled or the EULA being displayed, check out http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/photoshop-element-12-silent-install.html. It has the updated instructions for creating the application.xml.override file.

Adobe: Please improve the documentation about suppressing the prompt for Adobe ID at the above link, and update http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements/kb/silent-install-instructions-photoshop-elements-1.html to indicate it applies to Photoshop Elements 11 only.

Edit: I realized after I posted this that if setup.exe required a reboot, my script would interpret that as an error and serialization would fail. Here's a second pass at my batch file which should work around that condition. I've explicitly set REBOOT=ReallySuppress in the setup variables so if a reboot is required, setup.exe will not perform the reboot but will instead exit with error code 3010. In that case, the serialization is still performed but the error code can't be passed back to the calling process (i.e. SCCM) since we need to pass error code 3010 to ensure the calling process knows a reboot is required. In that case, if serialization failed, we won't know about it. Hopefully serialization will still work if a reboot is pending. Warning: this code is untested.

start "Photoshop Elements 12 Setup" /wait "%~dp0setup.exe" /UL1033 /V"SERIALNUMBER=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX COUNTRY=39 NODESKTOPICON=1 REBOOT=ReallySuppress"
if %errorlevel% equ 3010 goto rebootrequired
if %errorlevel% neq 0 exit /b %errorlevel%
"%~dp0adobe_prtk.exe" --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile="%~dp0prov.xml"
exit /b %errorlevel% 
:rebootrequired
"%~dp0adobe_prtk.exe" --tool=VolumeSerialize --provfile="%~dp0prov.xml"
exit /b 3010

[RyanGSteele]

Another question. If we need to uninstall the software after it has been serialized using this technique, is there something special we need to do to deactivate the software to return the license, or does the uninstaller take care of that?

[Henry_DUS]

Same for me:

adobe_prtk stuff works fine. I can use the program. But after starting it, i get always a Adobe ID logon question. Sur, I can close this popup... but I dont want it at all...

It would be nice if we can suppress this popup completely 😕

[Schule-Erlenbach]

We've the same problem as other users in this thread have (had?).

We're a school and recently bought 30 licenses (MLP AOO) of Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 (Mac OS X).

Now we need to deploy and activate it on all computers.

For us, it fails already when trying to generate the prov.xml file.

We use the following command:

/Library/Install/adobe_prtk --tool=VolumeSerialize --generate --serial=XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX --leid=V7{}PhotoshopElements-EMT12-Mac-GM --regsuppress=ss

We've already removed the quotation marks (") as mentioned above.

Of course, the adobe_prtk tool is in the correct directory and the serial number was there instead of the "XXXX".

The error is as following:

Copyright 2012 Adobe Systems Incorporated

All rights reserved.

Return Code = 14

We've a working internet connection without any restrictions / filtering etc.

How can I generate the prov.xml without any error?

Have a nice weekend!

Joël

[ABELLIER]

for the error code 14

I solved the pb with the following command below

adobe_prtk.exe --tool=VolumeSerialize --generate --serial=xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx --leid=V7{}PhotoshopElements-EMT12-Win-GM --regsuppress=ss --EulaSuppress –-provfilepath=”Patch to\prov.xml”

[fabians33970110]

Also encountered the error code 14, but with Acrobat DC Continuous Track. Classic was working!

Be careful about the LEID you use. I had to use the ETLA LEID for DC Continuous but the "normal" LEID for Classic.

Error 14 means: Failed to validate the serial number.

Look into %temp% folder for oobelib.log.

I tried every serialnumber I got from the license guy, but finally it worked after I switched to the ETLA LEID "V7{}AcrobatETLA-12-Win-GM".

Product LEIDs:

DC Continuous Track

• Win - V7{}AcrobatCont-12-Win-GM
• Mac - V7{}AcrobatCont-12-Mac-GM

DC Classic Track

• Win – V7{}AcrobatESR-12-Win-GM
• Mac – V7{}AcrobatESR-12-Mac-GM

Note

Once an ETLA serial is provided, the LEID changes for unserialized commands. For both tracks It becomes V7{}AcrobatETLA-12-Win-GM (on Windows) and V7{}AcrobatETLA-12-Mac-GM (on Macintosh).

[justinFotog]

I'm in the exact situation as the last post here...  since Oct 2013 and we're all still having the same issue

I would just like to get rid of the adobe sign-in at this point.  I can silently install with serial and no EULA and no registration which is great, but sign-in with Adobe ID is the last step.

According to the aptee documentation, if AE12 counts as CS6, Return Code = 14 could mean "Unknown Error", which isn't really helpful.

Help Adobe-wan-Kenobi's, you're our only hope...

[ZakRhino]

Don't