Adobe CS4 Acrobat Pro 9.3.0

[ernstcs]

Is anyone else seeing the Acrobat Pro 9.3.0 update breaking suite
activations?

I swear all of the suite was working on 9.1.3 before I patched it to 9.3.0.
Now Acrobat tells me to launch Photoshop to activate the suite. I do
that...and still get the error. If I blow away the licensing database to get
prompted by hand my license code no longer is accepted either when I get
prompted to enter it as expected.

LOVE ADOBE...NOT.

Craig E

[donmontalvo]

I wonder if there's a way to integrate this Adobe License fix into a Casper policy?
Ernst, Craig S. ERNSTCS at uwec.edu wrote:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/licensing.html

I'm sure these issues are being addressed by OOBE. :)

Don

[ernstcs]

Thanks, Don. However, I'm not sure this will do the trick actually. I'm not
seeing the specific error "Licensing for this product has stopped working."
It's actually telling me this product was licensed as a suite, please launch
Adobe Photoshop first...blah...blah...

I'll still take a look. My license repair tool thus far, delete the PCD file
and put my code back in. =)

Craig E

[stevewood]

I can tell you from my past experience with this error, the only way to fix
it has been to re-install the entire suite. It is a major pain in the arse. I've tried the license recovery tool that Don sent, but it never worked. You may have better luck with it than I did.

Adobe needs to pull their heads out of the sand and fix their crappy
installer and update systems. And I know they are aware of it because we've
all been screaming loudly enough for the last 10 years about it. Plus I
know they've brought in admins that are very vocal about the problems to
discuss it at Adobe's campus in San Jose (John Welch specifically, for those
that know the name). And I know the installer team at Adobe has publicly
said they are working to fix the system.

Let's just hope CS5 is a better animal and plays nicer in the sandbox with
the other kiddies.

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475
Sent from Dallas, TX, United States

[ernstcs]

Which I forgot to mention. We're using a Master Suite license. After I kill
the license database and I get prompted to reserialize the suite, it didn't
want to take my suite license anymore either. Nice big red X at the end.

More testing today...if anyone cares...

[pbachuwa]

I believe we all hate Adobe, I had the same problem with 9.2 :(

Patrick Bachuwa
Client Technical Services
Sears Holdings Corporation
Michigan Campus
3000 W. 14 Mile Road
P.O. Box 8073
Royal Oak, MI. 48068-8073
Phone: 248 637-0350
Patrick.Bachuwa at searshc.com

[ernstcs]

Correct, that’s what I ended up doing for this faculty member. I deleted all of the application folders and the Adobe Application Support folder and reinstalled and didn’t patch. (Of course...don’t delete this all of you run multiple version of Creative Suite on your system). You may actually want to use the uninstaller from the install media then. =)

Craig E

[stevewood]

And, for those that care to read John's rant on the 9.3 update process, you
can go to his web site and have a laugh:

www.bynkii.com

Steve Wood
Director of IT
swood at integer.com

The Integer Group | 1999 Bryan St. | Ste. 1700 | Dallas, TX 75201
T 214.758.6813 | F 214.758.6901 | C 940.312.2475
Sent from Dallas, TX, United States

[donmontalvo]

Yep, and the man himself, John Nack at Adobe, has some interesting read:
Steve Wood wrote:

http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/11/installer_rant.html
http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2008/12/notes_from_installer_mgmt.html

The OOBE program was created to address all these installer issues. Adobe can't hide anymore. Third party photo imaging (like Pixelmator), vector (like VectorDesigner) and PDF applications (like PDFOpenPro) are rising to the occasion...they're far from perfect (for example Pixelmator still doesn't handle CMYK), but effective/affordable enough for Adobe to sit up and take notice. Happily, each of these apps have proper drag installer or pkg/mpkg installer, and have full defauts ability for flawless deployment (using Casper of course) and management.

Don

[#10]

And, for those that care to read John's rant on the 9.3 update process,

you can go to his web site and have a laugh:

www.bynkii.com

Yes, a must read to say the least. : )

[bentoms]

Rather eloquent with his frustrations.. especially when it comes to lemurs.

:)

Ben Toms, Tel: +44 (0) 20-3037-3819
IT Helpdesk: +44 (0) 20-3037-3883
GREYgroup, The Johnson Building, 77 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8JS

[ernstcs]

Yeah, doesn't break an install right from the media upgraded from version
9.0 for Acrobat Pro.

So...something with my 9.1.3 overlay package is causing this issue. None of
which would be a problem if their Acrobat updates were standardized...

Have a nice day. And the blog read...pretty much sums up how I feel about
this topic every time I have to deal with it.

Thanks all. Have a GREAT DAY! =)

Craig E

[donmontalvo]

That was sooo mean...but spot on! LOL!
Toms, Ben (Grey Communications Group - IT) Ben.Toms at grey.com wrote:

Don

[RobertHammen]

How did you create the package? Snapshot or manual?
On Jan 24, 2010, at 6:12 PM, Ernst, Craig S. wrote:

I have 25 suite users and 75 standalone licenses. As you noted, the suite users aren't serialized - just the standalone ones.

I ended up picking on one machine with the Creative Suite on it, upgraded the version of Acrobat Pro to 9.3.0, and then packaged the entire Acrobat application folder + /Library/Internet Plug-ins/AdobePDFViewer.plugin

Did the same thing on a machine with a standalone license.

Created 2 policies, one for machines having the suite, one for those with just Acrobat. Deployed the relevant package. Had absolutely zero issues...

I don't snapshot Acrobat updates, after one of the 9.1.x updates, when snapshotted, made it impossible to enter text into certain fields - I just push out the entire application folder...

--Robert

[ernstcs]

I typically start over from scratch when I build a new Acorbat package.

I go from the base Acrobat install from the Master Collection single DMG and
do a snapshot of the upgrades. Worked fine up to 9.1.3.

Craig E

[pbachuwa]

I am only using the CS4 suite and what I did for the 9.2 patch was had
to install CS4 with all the updates excluding the Acrobat patches.
Opened composer and did a New and modified snapshot and then installed
Acrobat patches and then I built the 9.2 package.

Patrick Bachuwa
Client Technical Services
Sears Holdings Corporation
Michigan Campus
3000 W. 14 Mile Road
P.O. Box 8073
Royal Oak, MI. 48068-8073
Phone: 248 637-0350
Patrick.Bachuwa at searshc.com

[RobertHammen]

As long as you know a particular install is "virgin" (i.e. no plugins installed), I'd follow the approach I did - upgrade an existing copy, deploy to others as appropriate. I had no licensing issues, or any other problems, doing it that way...