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J
j18957983
Participant
October 4, 2024
Question

CS6 activation after successful deactivation fails

  • October 4, 2024
  • 2 replies
  • 722 views

Hey,

 

I have the following issue:

 

System: Windows 10, CS6 Design Standard

 

Steps to repdroduce:

- Have CS6 Standard installed on a PC for multiple years but Acrobat Pro stopped working recently

- Deactivated CS6

- Installed CS6 again on the same (!) PC

- Activated CS6 via account login (QR code). First Photoshop did work.

- After restarting Photoshop it complained that too many PCs have been activated and I should activate again. Acrobat works fine btw.

 

Feels more like a killswitch than an error by me.

 

As the support don't want to help. Any sugestions on how to solve that? I have still access to both PCs on which CS6 had been installed. But when I tried to deactivate on the second PC to solve it for the first PC, I got the same issue.

 

Thanks!

2 replies

L
LGroen
Participant
April 14, 2025

Exact the same issue, first I forgot to deactivate 1 of 2 before reinstall Windows on the same PC.
After that it was inpossible to activate because of max. 2 licences used.
Then I deactivate the license at the second Laptop to free up 1 or 2 license, but after deactivation NONE Adobe Master Collection CS6 could reactivate. 
This is a Activation Server Issue and Adobe Support could not free up that 2 activations, but years ago they could do it if there were issues. Also the Activation Server did not registrate the Deactivation or remember the PC-Name of MAC-address of the registrated PC's / Laptop's.
Activated Products also not visible in My Account. Adobe Support said they working at it, some problem with the activation server but waiting for multiple month's. Nothing happen. Cannot use CS6 MC which cost a lot money. 

Kevin Stohlmeyer
Community Expert
Kevin StohlmeyerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
October 4, 2024

@j18957983 this post should hopefully provide some answers:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/activation-limit-reached-for-non-subscription-adobe-desktop-applications/td-p/14804413/redirect_from_archived_page/true

J
j18957983Author
Participant
October 12, 2024

Hey,

 

thanks, though, the only solution which could fit is running the cleaning tool.

However, I am hesitant to do that as I don't know which files will be deleted and which files I therefore need to back up.

Acrobat Pro still seems to be activated so I fear to loose the last functionality which is there. If the activation server was triggered but the activation failed, I might end up without anything.

 

I now tried to back up Registry, ProgramData\Adobe and Users\...\AppData\[Roaming, Local, ...]\Adobe and delete the files. This did not help. After a reinstall I now get a dialog "00 days left of testing" though it should be around 20 by now. But I can just click it away and continue using CS6.

 

Do you know what I need to back up to keep the current license info before running the cleaning tool?

J
j18957983Author
Participant
October 30, 2024

I tried everything which was proposed. I even created a non-internet VM and installed CS6 from CD and tried online activation - no success.

 

I start using CS 5.5 now ...

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