I purchased Photoshop CS3 several years ago, but have lost the installation disc along with the activation key. I never registered the product on adobe's website. I do have 2 machines that I have activated the software on previously. In addition, I have a backed up copy of my photoshop folder from 'Program Files' in Windows. Is there any way to retrieve the activation key from my backed up folder?
Or can Adobe check based on my MAC address and find the key based on the 2 computers that have successfully activated previously? I purchased Photoshop CS3 several years ago, but have lost the installation disc along with the activation key. I never registered the product on adobe's website. I do have 2 machines that I have activated the software on previously. In addition, I have a backed up copy of my photoshop folder from 'Program Files' in Windows.
Is there any way to retrieve the activation key from my backed up folder? Or can Adobe check based on my MAC address and find the key based on the 2 computers that have successfully activated previously? If you have the machines the software was activated on and they are working you should be able to extract the Product ID which is different to activation. Your post is slightly confusing as you talk about a MAC address by which I'm guessing you mean the unique ID of the network card in your computer rather than a Mac computer?
So I'll assume your on Windows as you have a Windows backup.Download a copy of Belarc Advisor which is freeIt will produce a list of serial numbers for most of the software on your PC. If you have a Mac you need the commercial version which is not free. If your CS3 was bought as an update to CS2 then this will not work as you'll also require the serial for CS2 -the upgrade qualifying product.You can download the installation media from here. If you have the machines the software was activated on and they are working you should be able to extract the Product ID which is different to activation. Your post is slightly confusing as you talk about a MAC address by which I'm guessing you mean the unique ID of the network card in your computer rather than a Mac computer? So I'll assume your on Windows as you have a Windows backup.Download a copy of Belarc Advisor which is freeIt will produce a list of serial numbers for most of the software on your PC. If you have a Mac you need the commercial version which is not free.
If your CS3 was bought as an update to CS2 then this will not work as you'll also require the serial for CS2 -the upgrade qualifying product.You can download the installation media from here. Honestly, I think Adobe is running a scam on all us. We had older versions that worked perfectly fine. They disabled those versions to force us to subscribe. I've 'chatted' with help numerous times to solve the problem,and nothing. My latest error after downloading their install folder 'Photoshop CS3 can't be installed because of a conflict with Photoshop CS3'.I run Windows 10 and had no issue.
Been running my Photoshop for about a 1 1/2 years, no problem. I use Photoshop infrequently, so paying $20 a month to make them richer is useless to me.Goodluck to others. We're being held hostage through cyber terrorism. Good evening,I want to thank Gener7 with this answer and his shortcut.I bought an old camera (canon 1D mIII) and could not open the RAW files with my CS version.I found via the right plug-in but had also to find an old CS3 version.To day i Bought it in Holland for $ 30,00 and had ofcourse an problem with the activation.With the link from Gener7 i get an new activationcode and an program from Adobe to install CS3.After putting in de new code everything is working fine.ThanksGreetingsDirk Rotterdam Netherlands.