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Photoshop CS3 [CS3 is a dead, locked]

Forum|Forum|9 years ago
August 18, 2016
3 replies
17054 views

Photoshop CS3 suddenly stopped working on Windows 10, with the message: 'licensing for this product has stopped working'. The message also said I had to uninstall, then reinstall. I've now uninstalled and attempted to reinstall twice. Both times I've got a message saying it was only able to install one shared component, but couldn't install Photoshop CS3 plus other shared components. What's the solution?

If I manage to reinstall Photoshop, how will I activate it? I have the program registered for two computers, so that's all my activations used up. After Photoshop stopped working with the licensing message, I was unable to start it again to deactivate the licence before uninstalling. So I imagine that, as far as Adobe is concerned, I've used my activations up and can't do any more.

This is why no longer having access to a live Adobe technician is a big problem. I'm using Photoshop professionally and this is a serious business disruption for me.

The only thing I can think that could have precipitated the problem was that earlier on the same day Photoshop died, I had installed and ran Acronis True Image. Maybe doing that image triggered Photoshop into thinking I was trying to clone the installation to install on a third computer? But that would be crazy...

Photoshop was installed on my C: drive and I've wondered if installing it on my 😧 drive partition might work. But I prefer to have it on C: and haven't tried that solution.

(This is only part of my current Adobe problems - the other problem was that my other computer (Windows 7) that ran Photoshop and InDesign was getting really scratchy and I reinstalled Windows 7. Foolishly, I forgot to first deactivate my Adobe products. And now I can't reactivate them. I'll do a separate post for this though. But again - where is a live technician when you need one!)

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Correct answer

So I was able to resolve the error that I was having with minimal effort. I ran Process Monitor and found that there was an application called AGSServices.exe that was getting lots of errors trying to connect to the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache. I deleted the cache.db file in that folder and the next time I opened up photoshop it asked me to reenter the license information. Presto! That fixed it. In order to delete the cache.db file, I had to go into safemode but you could probably delete it without going into safemode if you have not tried to open an adobe product since a restart.

I guess the cache.db file got corrupted. Hopefully this helps someone who is having a similar issue.

Bani Verma

Community Manager

Hi,

As the error message says "Licensing for this product has stopped working" i would suggest you all to try the troubleshooting shared in the below links and see if that helps:

Error: "Licensing has stopped working" | Windows

Error: "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS

You are welcome to update this discussion in case you need further assistance.

J

johnmacgAuthor

Known Participant

What a huge set of things to do and try to understand!

It seems to me that these solutions assume that you actually have an installed version of Photoshop. As I have said several times, I don't have Photoshop installed at all. And I'm not the only one who was hit by this situation earlier this month. The licensing error message we got (see my opening message in this discussion) said to uninstall Photoshop and then reinstall it, before addressing the licensing issue.

The problem is that after we uninstalled, we couldn't reinstall Photoshop CS3.

Incidentally, at the end of the link you mentioned, there's a list of circumstances under which this licensing error can occur. My situation is similar to that reproduced below, in that Photoshop has already been running for some time (a year) before the problem occurred. However my machine conditions are very different. I have a 2Tb hard drive and 16Gb of RAM.

If the application previously started successfully at least once, or if it has been in heavy use, the issue is likely related to a system resource. (Causes include low memory, low disk space, or simultaneous launch of several programs.) The result could be a temporary failure in the licensing system or corruption of the permanent licensing data.

Bani Verma

Community Manager

Just to confirm have you tried deleting the folders given in "Solution 8" in the above shared help document?, if not i would recommend you to delete the below mentioned folders:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\caps

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\backup

C:\Program Data\Adobe\SLStore ***( Program Data is a hidden folder please see, Show Hidden Files and Folders in Windows 7, 8.x, 10, or Vista )

After this you may download a fresh setup of Adobe Photoshop CS3 from here and install: Download Adobe Creative Suite 3 products.

Let us know if this helps.

A

Anonymous

Correct answer

So I was able to resolve the error that I was having with minimal effort. I ran Process Monitor and found that there was an application called AGSServices.exe that was getting lots of errors trying to connect to the following folder: C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache. I deleted the cache.db file in that folder and the next time I opened up photoshop it asked me to reenter the license information. Presto! That fixed it. In order to delete the cache.db file, I had to go into safemode but you could probably delete it without going into safemode if you have not tried to open an adobe product since a restart.

I guess the cache.db file got corrupted. Hopefully this helps someone who is having a similar issue.

gener7

Community Expert

Sounds like you found something here. so if this clears johnmacg's problem, I'll see it is credited as the correct answer for future reference.

Gene

J

johnmacgAuthor

Known Participant

No it doesn't resolve my problem. This fix works on an actual installation of Photoshop. The problem I and others have had, is that we've got the 'licensing for this product has stopped working' message. That message said to uninstall Photoshop, and then reinstall. But we can't reinstall.

Please don't press the correct answer button yet!

John T Smith

Community Expert

CS3 is SO OLD that you may never get it to install or run on Win10

An idea that MAY work to install and/or run old programs in Windows 10... works for some, not for others

-http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/15523-compatibility-mode-settings-apps-change-windows-10-a.html

-or Run as Administrator http://forums.adobe.com/thread/969395 to assign FULL permissions may help... says Encore, but sometimes required for ALL Adobe programs (this is NOT the same as using an Administrator account)

Also read Will Adobe CS3 work in Windows 10?

J

johnmacgAuthor

Known Participant

CS3 is not all that old and it's perfectly adequate for my publishing business. I ran it without a hitch for 12 months on Windows 10 before it stopped working yesterday. The error messages were to do with licensing, not the ability of CS3 to run in Windows 10.

cmarmalade

Participant

I can't even reinstall CS3, let alone attempt to reactivate it. You too? I find it hard to believe that a Microsoft update to Windows 10 would prevent an Adobe installation - even an installation that wouldn't work properly. I think it's more likely to have been an internet intervention by Adobe.

Now I'm paranoid that my also old (CS5.5) version of InDesign may be interfered with in time, so I've set up Windows Firewall to block all communications from Adobe.

While I can still manipulate images on a separate computer, it's a considerable nuisance that Photoshop and InDesign are no longer working together on my production computer. For this reason I'm having to consider subscribing to the Creative Cloud Photography Plan and paying through the nose for the rest of my professional life.

I've spent the better part of the past two days trying various things recommended online without much luck... some of it even from Adobe. Was still having the installation from the disc blindly fail (apparently a known problem by Adobe). I had no choice but spent many hours trying to remove EVERYTHING Adobe from my computer that I could. I just restarted and re-ran the installation from the disc and... the installer runs (this is progress) but the bad news is that it only installs Acrobat, it fails to install any of the other applications. My last ditch effort (which was the one that worked???...who knows, could be combination of things, I tried so many things) at trying to get this to work was by following these steps to a T: Kevin O'Hara | How To Fix CS3 Licensing Has Stopped Working | Kevin O'Hara . For the clean-up software that he doesn't have links to a simple google search will find them. Just for reference I'm running Win7 Ultimate and the failure didn't seem to coincide with any Windows automatic update.

I did run into this common problem when trying to install on 64-bit where the file AdobePdf.dll is needed but I had this file saved from last time I installed and (apparently) ran into this problem so that hurdle was easily overcome. Anyhow, progress but certainly not 100% success. I have found on the forums where A LOT of people had the same problem with the install on Win7.

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