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My wife has been using CS5 on her Windows 10 desktop - unfortunately the desktop was "damaged" in a hose move and she now has a new Windows 11 desktop. Can we load her CS5 software from the original CD onto the new windows 11 desktop? Will CS5 work with the new desktop? Yes I know that CS5 is ancient but she's been using it for about a dozen years and is very happy with it. Also she really doesn't want to learn a new version or pay a monthly fee to Adobe as she doesn't use Photoshop enough to warrant that. Any advice or suggestions would be welcome.
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It depends on whether she has used one or both of the allowed 2 activations. To activate a third install, one of the previous two has to be deactivated (Help > Deactivate).
In the past, Adobe would reset activation counts in case of disk failure/crash, where it wasn't possible to deactivate. They no longer do that.
If she has used only one activation slot, it should activate in the new install. If she has used both, there is no way. It will not be possible to activate again.
Even if it can be activated, this is, as you say, ancient software and there is no guarantee it will work properly on a new operating system and new hardware.