September 8, 2010

Adobe CS4 Design Premium Stopped Working

Whatever the reason, I could not run any Adobe application this afternoon. This was after all my trials and tribulations as outlined in some earlier posts, frustrating. As I launched Photoshop or Acrobat, I received a message window to tell me that “The license for this product stopped working” on its title bar and instructed me to contact my IT department. At the end of the message there was a cryptic error code “148:3″.

My product was fully installed, running, and performing well. So it was a licensing issue I thought. I looked in the directory:

C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Aplication Data\FLEXnet

and saw a .log file. Looking into this text file revealed a message “Our service is disabled.” If you run into this problem, you may want to know what I did. I am telling you what I did and you follow it at your own risk.

  1. I went to “Start/Run” and typed “services.msc” into the “Open” field, then pressed [Enter]
  2. Looked for “FLEXnet Licensing Service” under the column labeled “Name”
  3. Its status showed “Stopped” which was the cause of my problem
  4. I right-clicked on “FLEXnet Licensing Service”, selected “Properties”
  5. Under the “General” tab, I set the startup type to “Manual” and clicked on “Start” to start the service
  6. I was not sure about this, but I tried it anyway: Under “Recovery” tab for the first failure, I chose “Restart the Service”
  7. Clicked OK

Photoshop and Acrobat started fine. I do not know what made the licensing service to stop. But now, I know how to kick start that again.

Single File HDR, really?

Stitched and HDR processed, Rockport Harbor, MA Well, not exactly but perhaps a mini HDR; but a very useful one at that. There are numerous articles, Web tutorials, books written about the high dynamic range image processing and for a good reason. The process yields remarkable results with detailed highlights and detailed shadows. Images obtained from HDR processing encompass a range of tonalities that would not be possible to capture on film or in digital sensors. After all, who does not want to have a film or a digital sensor that doubles or triples the EV range, maybe even more. [Read more...]

How I Installed Adobe CS4, an Ordeal

Note added on 12/15/2009. See my last post about Adobe Air application installation solution.

Note added on 1/18/2009. I wonder if Adobe Installer sets up a MiniSQL to facilitate copy protection and module integration. If it does, could that clash with MS-SQL? I believe Adobe uses Bonjour, and possibly a proxy service. There is also the FNPLicensingService.exe without which Adobe products do not run. I wish Adobe, or someone who knows the innards of the OS could say something about this problem.

In the previous post, I explained the process but it probably got mixed too much with editorial comments I was compelled to make. Here, I will address just the installation problems and what made it possible for me to install CS4. Now, I am not saying that it will work for you. What I want to share with you are two things. First, Adobe tech support is not giving the best advice or trouble shooting and you should not blindly follow them. Second, the solution may lie in unexpected places and perseverance.

I am outlining what I did, follow my steps at your own risk. [Read more...]

Adobe CS4 Install Problems, Royal Pain …

This is a copy of my post to an Adobe forum, with a couple of additions (in italics). In the next post, you will see a more to the point explanation of my problem and how I ended up resolving them.

There is a happy ending to my misery, but shame on you Adobe support personnel and principal scientist for suggesting totally inaccurate procedures for the solution. My common sense prevailed and did not listen to the “oh, so certain of himself” support person that I had to UNINSTALL EVERYTHING ON MY COMPUTER MADE BY ADOBE. You are full of it! And you know with what. I was not about to uninstall my complete CS3 and cripple my ability to work.

I tried several times to install CS4, my computer rebooting at some point on all of them. I called for tech support, language problems aside, the procedure was like Chinese torture. First person asked for my full ID, address, phone, serial number, my problem, etc. Then decided that I needed to talk to tech support. No kidding! [Read more...]

Extra Memory for my Desktop: Update

In an earlier post I explained how I installed extra memory for better computer performance, that was last August. Since then my computer started acting strangely. Don’t get me wrong, the performance gains were real and when the computer was running it worked beautifully. The problem was with the cold boot in the morning, it would not start until it warmed up a little, taking upwards of five minutes of “hand cranking” to start. Once it started, there was no ill effects. When I had lots of work to do, I began leaving it on all the time to save the trouble of restarting in the morning. It ran for weeks without any problems. [Read more...]

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