Photoshop CS3 Special Report: Installation problems, fixes

Installation of Photoshop CS3 may fail if any remnants of the Photoshop CS3 Beta are present on the target volume. Installation may also fail for other reasons, including presence of CS2 applications and more.

Fixes:

Run clean-up script Adobe has made available a clean-up script that will purportedly delete all traces of Photoshop CS3 beta from the target volume. This should be your first course of action when encountering problems installing final-release Photoshop CS3 or other CS3 applications. The company says the following steps should be taken before running the script:

• Backup all fonts, Version Cue repositories, plugins and any other important files.
• Run the general-purpose CS3 beta uninstaller, located in Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers by default.

Deactivate and manually removeYou may need to manually deactivate then uninstall the Photoshop CS3 Beta. In order to do this, follow these steps:

1. From within Photoshop CS3 Beta (if it is still on your Mac) go to the Help menu and choose Deactivate
2. Run the general-purpose CS3 beta uninstaller, located in Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers by default. Use the Remove Adobe Photoshop CS3 Components option.
3. Next, remove the following files as indicated by this Adobe Knowledge Base article.
• ~/Library/Preferences/[any files and folders with CS3 in the name] (the tilde [~] represents the current home user directory
• /Applications/Adobe Bridge CS3
• /Applications/Adobe Device Central CS3
• /Applications/Adobe Help Viewer 1.1
• /Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3
• /Applications/Adobe Stock Photos CS3
• /Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe [any files and folders with CS3 in the name]
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PCD
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/backup/
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/caps
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Installers
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Uninstall

Check clean-up script settings If you only ran level 1 of the Adobe clean-up script, which does not remove Acrobat 8, you may still run into problems with installation of CS3. Several users report that they needed to use level 2, which does remove Acrobat 8 before CS3 installation would proceed properly.

Create new administrator account In some cases, you may be able to succeed with Photoshop CS3 installation by setting up a new administrator account an running the CS3 installer from it.

1. Open the Accounts pane of System Preferences, then follow these steps:
2. Click the padlock and enter your administrator password
3. Press the (plus) button to create the new user.

4. Enter the desired login name and password, and check the box for "Allow this user to administer this computer,"
5. Logout of your current account from the Apple menu and login to the new account.
6. Re-attempt installation of Photoshop CS3 and other problematic CS3 applications.

Clear caches This may need to be done after removing all vestiges of the CS3 beta -- with one of many popular utilities (such as Tiger Cache Cleaner) before proper installation of retail Photoshop CS3 can occur.

Temporarily uninstall all CS2 applications As previously reported, you may need to remove all CS2 applications before installation of Photoshop CS3 and other CS3 applications can take place. Follow the instructions in this Adobe Knowledge Base article to do so.

Remove caps.db Some users report that they needed to remove the file caps.db from the following directories:

• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/caps
• /Library/Application Support/Adobe/backup

before CS3 installation proceeded correctly.

Reader reports:

One reader writes:

"Same here, the new version will not install due to 'a corrupted database.' Adobe tech support says that all Adobe programs have to be removed or I have to wait for a new CS3 PS Beta uninstaller that they think will be ready today or tomorrow. Only 5 hours on the phone with their tech people with this problem.

Another reader adds:

"Yes this is happening to everyone I talked to. Adobe completely missed the QA part on this one. They should have had it part of the Installer, "Do you want to uninstall Photoshop CS3 beta,' and then just do it."

MacFixIt reader Dean writes:

"Just to add to the anecdotal information ? my home machine installed the suite except that Photoshop CS3 wouldn't install because of a 'conflict.' I now realize this was because at some point I deleted the beta of Photoshop CS3 "by hand" and did not use the de-install tools. I think I did this because I got tired of reassigning every image-type's association to back to CS2 when the beta expired. I've tried to find all the pieces but nothing works. At my office the installer only successfully installed Acrobat, all the other components failed.

"Removing CS2 products is not an option for me since I'm not yet willing to trust CS3 only for production."

MacFixIt reader Michael Berger writes:

"I spent 5 hours on the phone with adobe yesterday trying to get photoshop to launch. They took me to level 4 in the clean script while logged in as the root user and still nothing. I am on an MacBooPro with the intel. They left me with the promise they would get back to me in two days which I have no problem with I can just re-install CS2 I guess."

Index:

• Beta may not have to be deactivated
• Installation problems, fixes
• Release notes
• Security flaws discovered: not demonstrated to affect Macs, but may
• When the Photoshop CS3 beta expires

Resources