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Question

Photoshop CS6 on Vista started failing on Nov 5 at startup during CC license check

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 13, 2021
3 replies
1971 views

For many years I have been using Photoshop CS6 almost daily on the same HP PC I use to drive my Nikon 9000 medium-format film scanner. Due to limitations with the old film scanner, this PC is still on Vista and really not used for much of anything besides scanning and, up until now, editing.

As recently as November 4 this setup was still working. Then less than 24 hours later, on November 5, it stopped working. Specifically, at startup time, during the phase in which PS delegates to CC to check the license (this is not a standalone PS installation and I have no serial number), it halts with a dialog box complaining about being unable to connect to the Adobe Server. See attached screenshot.

Note that my subscription (Photography plan) is up-to-date.

Any ideas what is going on and if there is any fix for it? Thank you in advance for your thoughts and assistance.

Windows

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scottj49790240Author

Participating Frequently

Yes, I have the CC version (13.0) of PS CS6 with the Photography plan. I installed this a long time ago: Oct 18, 2015 according to Vista Control Panel. I installed it by download from CC; I still have the old CreativeCloudSet-Up .exe file I downloaded and which I then used to install PS. This was not a standalone install and I don't have a serial number for it; I do have a CC account and it is up-to-date and paid-for (Photography plan). I've been able to install the latest/modern version of PS from CC on a Windows 8 laptop using this account, and that works just fine, but for various reasons for me that is very inconvenient to use for editing and I'd vastly prefer to keep doing my editing on the old Vista box.

The stage at which PS CS6 on my Vista box fails now, is upon startup. It opens a Creative Cloud dialog box that momentarily says it is validating my license online. (See new attachment on this posting.) After displaying that for just a few seconds, then it displays the dialog box I attached with my original posting, announcing the failure.

I've tried all the links in that dialog box and they work but they do not help. Eg I have no network connectivity issues from this Vista box and can browse the web with its (outdated) Chrome and Firefox browsers just fine (except being out-of-date some modern web sites don't properly render fully in those browsers, but I wouldn't think that would affect the license check). I wonder if this might be a TLS issue; being an old machine it might not support the latest TLS protocol (1.2 or 1.3 maybe). I wonder if, on Nov 5, Adobe updated the CC endpoint which my PS CS6 instance uses to verify the license, and removed support for older versions of TLS, and that's what has brought me down. Any thoughts on that, and any fix for it?

BTW I have contacted Adobe support twice for this since the Nov 5 onset. Not helpful or useful by any means, unfortunately. Both times they ultimately referred me to this forum, telling me to ask my question here. So here I am 🙂

JJMack

Community Expert

The Creative Cloud version of CS6 is Photoshop version 13.1.2 not Photoshop version 13.0. There are three versions of Photoshop CS6. Windows perpetual Photoshop version 13.0.1.3, Mac perpetual Photoshop version 13.0.6 and Creative Cloud Photoshop Version 13.1.2. Though Creative Cloud desktop will shod it as version 13.0 and Up to date. CS6 systems info tough will show it as version 13.1.2. You need a Subscription for Creative cloud CS6 version. and you need to sign in to your Adobe account with your subscription in the Creative Cloud Desktop Application to keep CS6 activation current. If your CS6 info is showing its version 13.0 it looks like your install has be broken.

Make sure you have used the creative cloud desktop application to sign into your Adobe Account that has your subscription to keep your CS6 activation current.

JJMack

scottj49790240Author

Participating Frequently

Have you tried un-installing Adobe Application Manager and all traces of it from your machine. Then a reinstall Application Manager. Create cloud application are activated for a period of time when that time period expires they need to be reactivated. This is done via Creative Cloud Desktop application, However in your case it seems Adobe Application Manager does the Activation. You have to get Adobe Application Manager functional on your machine.

OK I just re-installed AAM version 10.0. It isn't available for download from Adobe anymore, from what I can tell, so I got it from this mirror: https://adobe-application-manager.en.lo4d.com/windows (I had Norton scan the download and give it a thumbs-up before running the installation).

Now, when I run AAM, it doesn't try to update itself anymore - so that much has changed from before. And it does prompt me for my Adobe ID and password, whereas before it didn't (it already knew them from back in the days when I last installed and ran it). But when I enter my ID and password - enter anything, really, valid values or not - AAM then displays an error: Unable to contact Adobe. Please connect to the Internet and try again. (even though my PC is already connected, and every test confirms as much, such as my having just downloaded AAM to this machine a few minutes beforehand, and now posting this comment to you on the Adobe support site just minutes afterward, neither of which would work if this PC weren't connected to the Internet)

Meanwhile PS gives me the same problem as originally reported at the top of this thread, when I try to start PS.

So unfortunately this AAM re-install did not solve the problem. It did persuade me further, to think that the problem is in the endpoint that AAM and PS are calling to validate credentials and/or license, or in the protocol used to talk to that endpoint. Eg perhaps Adobe discontinued use of old versions of the TLS protocol on their servers (1.0 and 1.1), but on Vista clients the Adobe products are still trying to use those old versions when calling the Adobe endpoint. Something like that. If so, I'm not sure how I would solve that, or if it is solvable. Just a guess.

I am thinking now that I will have to use my Vista machine as just a driver for the scanner going forward, and move all my editing to another, more modern, box.

jane-e

Community Expert

@scottj49790240 wrote:

Specifically, at startup time, during the phase in which PS delegates to CC to check the license (this is not a standalone PS installation and I have no serial number), it halts with a dialog box complaining about being unable to connect to the Adobe Server. See attached screenshot.

Note that my subscription (Photography plan) is up-to-date.

Hi

CS6 was released both as a stand-alone with a serial number and also as part of the Creative Cloud subscription. To clarify: you have the Creative Cloud version with the Photography plan, is that correct?

The error message you gave says to contact Customer Service, but the link in that old dialog may or may not be good.

Contact Adobe Customer Care:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/creative-cloud-services/how-to-contact-adobe-support/td-p/11875703
or you can send a tweet to @AdobeCare, as the Twitter team is known to be very responsive.

It's also possible that your subscription reverted to trial. If so, these steps may help:

https://helpx.adobe.com/manage-account/kb/stop-creative-cloud-trial-mode-after-purchase.html

Do not reply to PMs, as scammers are on forums these days. Adobe Staff has an "Employee" badge.

~ Jane

jane-e

Community Expert

Did you try contacting Adobe Customer Care through Twitter?

~ Jane

scottj49790240Author

Participating Frequently

Not through Twitter, no. But I submitted 2 cases to Adobe support, one through the phone (and shared my Vista box desktop remotely to the agent so he could poke around and see) and one over online chat. Neither were helpful; in both cases the agents gave up (one told me that Vista was not supported and used that as his "out") and suggested I come to this forum for help.

JJMack

Community Expert

CS6 required Activation which required a serial number. So the CS6 Activation servers would create your CS6] credentials and hide them on your disk.

Years ago Adobe made a update to CS6 that Update Perpetual CS6 version 13.0.1.3 on windows to version 13.1.2 Creative Cloud CS6.

I never tried to have Creative Cloud Desktop Update my Prepetual CS6 to creative cloud CS6 for I want to keep CS6 working like is was. However, Creative Cloud desktop on it own decided to Update my Perpetuals CS6. It was a disaster and CS6 was broken instead and reported it was now version 13.0 and CS6 Update now would always fail to fix up CS6. I then installed perpetual CS6 over the broken CS6 version 13.0. This install Fixed the broken CS6 verson 13.0. CS6 13.0 now worked and CS6 Update updated version 13.0 to version 13.1.2 Creative cloud CS6.

By any chance did you try to install a Photoshop Creative Cloud trial on your vista system. Why would your perpetual Photoshop CS6 be trying to check your Creative cloud photography subscription?

I thing something broke your CS6 inatsll

JJMack

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