Porting Adobe CS 5.1 installed on Windows 7

[SriniMurthy]

I have had a 11 year old desktop with a licensed copy of Photoshop CS5.1. With my custom actions and configuration, I find it valuable in my workflow and wouldn't think of moving to the creative cloud. Now as all good things must come to an end, the desktop died. I need to take this install and move it to a Windows 11 system. Are Photoshop binaries compatible with new OS versions, and in case I am not able to locate the original installation disk with the license key, what are my options ?

[D Fosse]

You can't "move" it. It needs to be installed from the original installation media. There's registry keys that need to be set.

Even if you can find the original disc, you may not be able to activate it unless you first deactivated on the old machine. You only had two activation slots. If you used both, you're out of luck. If you only used one, so that there's still one available slot, it should activate.

Adobe will no longer reset activation counts for the old Creative Suite apps.

[SriniMurthy]

the reason I said "move" is, I literally took the installed hard drive and plugged it into the new machine LOL 

[Barbara Ash]

Adobe does not support S5.1 on Windows 11. It is possible that version would work however some people have reported that it does not. If your software is registered with Adobe, you can probably download it and get the serial number by following the instructions at https://helpx.adobe.com/download-install/kb/downloaded-older-app.html

[D Fosse]

Oh, OK, so you can get old installers from Adobe now.

But it still may not activate.