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Adobe CS3 deactivation limits

Bad news for cloned backups.

CNET staff

Adobe's Creative Suite 3 imposes a limit of 20 deactivations per license. This is causing problems for users of cloned backups. MacFixIt reader Dee Dee Martin writes:

"I always try to remember to deactivate Adobe CS3 before cloning a backup, but yesterday (along with numerous other times) I forgot so I booted up from my clone, ran Photoshop and tried to deactivate.  I got a big dialog box saying "Deactivation Failed" error code 194:14, call Adobe tech support.

"I was told there is a limit (21 times) that I could deactivate CS3 and I had reached that limit. Adobe made a 'one time exception' and restored my activation count (yes Adobe tracks this stuff), but I would have to completely erase CS3 (using level 3 of their CS3Clean script) obliterating all prefs, settings, tools, printer profiles etc."

There doesn't seem to be a workable solution for this issue at present.

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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