Missing data required to run Elements

[kiekhaefers]

I recently had major hardware problems on a pc with Elements 4.0 installed.  The solution required using a reconditions pc with my hard drives.  The pc seems to work OK, but when I try to run Elements, I get the error message:  "Your Adobe Photoshop Elements user name, organization, or serial number is missing or invalid.  The application cannot continue and must now exit.".  Can I just uninstall Elements and reload?  Will this affect the picture files?  The pc with Elements installed is not online, although I don't know if that matters.

[Test Screen Name]

If you move your disks to a different PC a lot of apps will stop working and you'll have to reinstall them. From the original disks with the original serial number.

[kiekhaefers]

If I reinstall,  I am assuming that my original photo files will still be OK and I can access them.  Is that correct?

[Jeff Arola]

Yes all your photos are on your hard drive, so reinstall won't affect them.

The photoshop elements organizer doesn't actually store those photos, but just catalogs them with links to those images.

[kiekhaefers]

OK, next question.  When I try to uninstall Photoshop before reinstalling, The pc does not list Photoshop as an installed program even though the program and most of the files are present.  If I start to reinstall, will I get a lot of 'files already exist' type of messages and will that stop the installation?  Or do I have to manually delete all the Photoshop files?  If that is the case, are they identifiable?

[Jeff Arola]

The install must have gotten majorly messed up in the process of fixing your computer.

I would just try to install off your pse 4 cd and see what happens.

[kiekhaefers]

Finally I got Photoshop reinstalled.  It involved a trip back to the dealer because one of the drives was bad.  Now it installed but apparently lost the links to the Photo files.  I tried loading from files, but I get a message that the file already exists.  Also It won't let me enter a folder name to try and get all of the pictures at one shot.

[Jeff Arola]

If in the pse 4 organizer you go to Help>System Info and look under Current catalog, does it list one and a location?

[kiekhaefers]

Jeff, It does have a catalog name and location.  I don't know how important the catalog name is, but the location is definitely not the location of the pictures.  I assume there must be a way to set the correct catalog name.  Thanks for your help so far.

[kiekhaefers]

Yes it does.  It has a catalog name and location.