Serial Number not working.

[bobmcfarland]

Creative Master Suite 4 - legitimate purchased, installed and using for awhile without problems.  Suddenly getting error message: "This is part of a suite.  Start another program like Photoshop to activate."  Then a window asking for serial number.  But my serial number isn't accepted.  Adobe support difficult.  Any ideas?

[Ned Murphy]

Which application are you running when this occurs?  What does the message indicate when the serial number is not accepted?  Have you reinstalled any portion of the Suite recently?

[bobmcfarland]

Acrobat Professional.

The only thing I did recently was to install a new Adobe Photoshop Elements.  I did not re-install any program from the Creative Suite 4.

[Ned Murphy]

Did you try opening another of the Suite applications like Photoshop to perform the activation?

[bobmcfarland]

Yes.  That's when it asked for the serial number - which it is not recognizing.  It should be a legitimate serial number.

I have tried contacting Adobe and in fact am on hold right now -- but it has been a tedious effort.  All morning online and on the phone.

Transfered several times.  Any ideas?  If I erase the program form my computer and re-install?

[Ned Murphy · Accepted solution]

I suggest you deactivate (open Photoshop and choose Help -> Deactivate) then uninstall the whole suite and follow that with using the CS Cleaner Tool (link below).  Then try reinstalling the suite.

If you happen to have installed any Creative Cloud programs as trials then make sure all of that is uninstalled as well before you use the Cleaner.

Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool

helps resolve installation problems for CS3 thru CS6 and for Creative Cloud

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