Illustrator CS3 says my trial period has ended, refuses valid serial #

[kad.reg]

The serial number for the "Web Standard" package is correct, I verified it with Adobe phone support. (They don't offer any real support for a product this old.) Other Adobe components from CS3 work fine: Photoshop, InDesign, etc. On a Mac running 10.12.5.

Is there a .plist file or some config file someplace that makes Illustrator CS3 think I started a trial more than 30 days ago?

[Mike_Gondek]

You really should not update your OS to 10.12.5 when you are running older software such as CS3 that was never updated after 10.12 came out. It will work for the most part but all it takes is not being able to save and you will have put yourself in a bad situation by not flowing the System requirements | Adobe Illustrator​ which says leopard for CS3 . So you may want to downgrade you mac os prior to:

Use the Creative Cloud Cleaner Tool to solve installation problems

[kad.reg]

Thanks MikeGondek. I don't have any option of reverting to an earlier OS. It's not certain that the Sierra upgrade was what broke Illustrator; I run it seldom enough that I probably hadn't tried within the last year or more.

It's good to know about the Cleaner app, but it is scary: removes all traces of Adobe products it looks like. While I can download & reinstall CS3, there's no real guarantee that things will run after I do... and unlike AI, I rely on Photoshop every day.

I did uninstall AI using the uninstaller in /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers; downloaded AI CS3 from [ Download Adobe Creative Suite 3 products ]; reinstalled from that. Absolutely nothing has changed: still thinks AI's trial period has expired, still refuses the valid s/n.

[kglad]

read message 3 for all the reasons a valid serial number will trigger an invalid serial number message.

[Srishti Bali]

Moving to Downloading, Installing, Setting Up​

Regards

Srishti

[kglad · Accepted solution]

assuming you're using a valid adobe serial number (6 groups of 4 numbers and confirmed by adobe), you have a mismatch between your installation file and serial number.  ie, you can have a valid serial number, but if it's for program A and your installation file is for program B, you will see an invalid serial number message.

common mismatches are language/region (eg, serial number is for western europe and installation file is eastern europe), platform (eg, serial number is for a mac and installation file is win), license type (eg, education vs enterprise vs individual).

and one of the most common is using a program installation file with a suite's serial number. eg, using a cs6 suite serial number with a photoshop cs6 installation file.  that won't work even though photoshop is included in that suite.  you must use the suite's installation file (and you can choose to only install one program from the suite).

here's official info about that error,  http://helpx.adobe.com/creative-suite/kb/error-serial-number-valid-product.html

[kad.reg]

Thank you kglad! Very promising. In the process of DL'ing the entire suite now; hoping the problem was as described in the link, namely that I was using a suite s/n for an install from an individual product download.

Will update here with results.

[kad.reg]

Some progress, no cigar yet.

Licensing issue is solved. AI starts halfway — splash screen comes & goes. Nothing more. App is not selectable via ctrl-tab; can be quit from the Dock.

I'll mark kglad's post as having solved the initial problem.

[kglad]

for your ai failing to open, reset your preferences - http://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

[kad.reg]

kglad — thanks again, but no change.

Deleted the preferences file. Splash screen, the app still can't be switched to (made active with its name in upper left of screen). Uses minimal CPU time per Activity Monitor. Can be quit from the Dock.

I tried moving out of the way all the contents of /Users/<username>/Library/Preferences/Adobe Illustrator CS3 Settings/ and nothing changed. All those files were recreated though.

When I tried to start AI by double-clicking on a .SVG file (after deleting preferences), AI got as far as showing the UI's chrome but put up an alert: "The operation cannot complete because of an unknown error. [CANT]". Nothing happened when clicking on the alert's OK. From this state I had to force-quit, could not quit from the Dock.

[Jeff A Wright]

Kad.reg I would recommend reviewing the installation logs to see if there were any additional installation errors during your recent reinstallation of Creative Suite 3.  Details on how to locate the install logs can be found at Troubleshoot installation with install logs | Adobe Creative Suite 3, Adobe Creative Suite 4​.

My assumption is that, following Kglad's advice, you have resolved your installation error with Illustrator CS3.  It is likely something else is preventing the application from opening successfully on macOS 10.12.5.  If you do not find any installation errors in the log file then I would recommend starting a new discussion in the Illustrator forum at Illustrator​.

[kad.reg]

Thanks Jeff A. Wright. The installation logs didn't show any obviously helpful errors — just 7 of "xxx Error committing command ARKCAPSWritePayloadDataCommand", but I could not find anything useful about that in searching the Adobe Support page. (That search sure is lame... it's the OR of every word, with no way to specify a phrase that I could find.)

I posted a query over at https://forums.adobe.com/community/illustrator titled "Illustrator CS3 won't fully start on OSX Sierra 10.12.5".

[Jeff A Wright]

Thanks Kad.reg.  Yes the Creative Suite 3 install logs are a bit cryptic. We have improved them quite a bit in the most recent releases.

The Illustrator community will be familiar with any unusual behavior which may occur when using Illustrator CS 3 on Windows 10.

Feel free to update this discussion Kad.reg if you need to reinstall again and face any additional errors.

[kad.reg]

Jeff, I'm on Mac OSX 10.12.5, not Windows 10.

My other post [ Re: Illustrator CS3 won't fully start on OSX Sierra 10.12.5  ] got a quick reply from someone who insists that AI CS3 is simply incompatible with any OSX past 10.8. This hasn't been my experience, prior to Sierra (10.12).

Do you happen to know if AI CS3 is indeed b0rked by OSX 10.12?

[Jeff A Wright]

Kad.reg my apologies I read a lot of discussion.  Windows 10 or macOS 10.12 regardless neither operating system was in existence when the last update for Creative Suite 3 was released.  The community in the Illustrator forum will still be familiar with any unusual behavior and how to workaround it.

This discussion is in the Downloading, Installing, Setting Up forum which only focuses on the downloading, installing, and activation portion of the experience.