I am sorry for the poor documentation of Extension Manager which causes you so much trouble.

1. You can use BridgeTalk API to ask specific version of Extension Manager to do something. There is sample in packaging_extension.pdf about this. You don't need to know the installation path of Extension Manager. One thing to note is that the value of bt.target is version specific, i.e. "exman-5.0", "exman-5.5" send this message to different version of Extension Manager, so you can change this value to install/enable/disable/remove extensions using different version of Extension Manager. More detailed documentation of BridgeTalk can be found by clicking "Help" menu then clicking "Javascript Tools Guide CS5" in "Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CS5".

2. Specific version of Extension Manager only manage extensions for corresponding version of product. You should use Extension Manager CS5 to install extensions for Photoshop CS5. The reason that the extension you installed for Photoshop CS5.1 using Extension Manager CS5.5 is displayed for Photoshop CS5 in Extension Manager CS5 is that two versions of Photoshop specified the same directory for Extension Manager to manage extensions. This is a defect and will cause some problems if multiple versions of Photoshop co-existed in one machine. But "to find  previous (CS5) extension manager and to enable it" should work for you, I guess you use command line to enable it and specify wrong product name (see #3) so that it doesn't work.

3. When using command line, you should specify "product" attribute with the name displayed at the left panel of Extension Manager. So "Photoshop CS5 32" is correct. Remember to enclose it with double quote because of existence of space character.

4. As above mentioned, use display name of Photoshop, and call proper version of Extension Manager by BridgeTalk.

You can run script in batch mode without ExtendScript Tookit UI. Save the code which you normally input in the source window of ExtendScript Toolkit to a jsx file (plain text file with ".jsx" extension). Then run command as follows:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Utilities - CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe" –cmd yourscript.jsx

The installation location of "ExtendScript Toolkit.exe" is fixed, no matter where users install Creative Suite.

But I suggest you use another way.

1. Save the following code to a jsx file (e.g. diag.jsx):

resultFile = new File("D:/result.log");

resultFile.open("w");

resultFile.write(BridgeTalk.__diagnostics__);

resultFile.close();

2. In batch file, write something like:

if exists "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Utilities - CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe"

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Utilities - CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit CS5.5\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe" -cmd diag.jsx

else if exists "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Utilities - CS5\ExtendScript Toolkit CS5\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe"

    "C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Utilities - CS5\ExtendScript Toolkit CS5\ExtendScript Toolkit.exe" -cmd diag.jsx

3. Write script to extract full path of all installed versions of Extension Manager executable from "D:\result.log". No matter which version of ESTK is called to run this jsx file, all versions of Extension Manager will be listed.

4. Use CLI to run your command. Such as "D:\Adobe\Adobe Extension Manager CS5.5\Adobe Extension Manager CS5.5.exe" -suppress -install ...

If your command requires administrative previlege, please make sure you open "Command Prompt" as administrator (Windows) or use sudo in Terminal(Mac). Otherwise the command in suppress mode will fail silently.

ESTK is an optional component of Photoshop, Illustrator standalone installer and Creative Suite installer. It is checked at default. So most of users will have ESTK installed. But of course some of users are likely to uncheck it. The path should be the same on localized systems. I will double check it when I go to work the day after tomorrow.

Another way to find the installation directory of Extension Manager is to read pdb database. It is a SQLite database and is created after Adobe products are installed.

The database location is:

windows x86:

%HOMEDRIVE%\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\caps\pdb.db

windows x64:

%HOMEDRIVE%\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\Adobe\caps\pdb.db

Mac:

/Library/Application Support/Adobe/caps/pdb.db

SQL statements to find install info:

---------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------

select payloadId from payloads where productName='Adobe Extension Manager CS5.5';

The query result is somthing like {347D0632-0D1B-4815-A308-AE039EDD6802}

Then run the following sql:

select * from payload_data where payloadId='{347D0632-0D1B-4815-A308-AE039EDD6802}';

After that you can use command line to call Extension Manager.