Adobe CS4 Installation and License Check

This is a bit unrelated to my usual post, but hope this is useful for you.

I managed to install Adobe CS4 for Mac for editing some design stuff. After successful installation, when I launched one of the programs (Photoshop CS4, inDesign CS4, etc), the message box popped up in my Snow Leopard screen: "licensing for this product has stopped working". A new breed of license check different from earlier CS3.

After google a bit and try some solution offered by people, here I summarize my step to get rid of the error message and go straight into Photoshop CS4.

Please note, my system may be different from yours. I use Mac OS X 10.6.6 (any command below works for OS X 10.5 and 10.6), Installation of CS4 is default to /Applications folder.

1. Open Terminal.app
2. Edit file /etc/hosts using your own editor. (I used TextWrangler editor)
   edit /etc/hosts
3. When my editor display the file content, it may ask for permission to unlock the file (actually you can issue sudo, but TextWrangler can handle this kind of permission issue).

4. Paste the following code between 255.255.255.255 broadcasthost and ::1 localhost

   127.0.0.1 adobe.activate.com

   127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 hl2rcv.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 hl2rcv.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 adobeereg.com

   127.0.0.1 www.adobeereg.com

   127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 192.150.18.108

   127.0.0.1 adobeauthorizations.com

   127.0.0.1 adobeopenoptions.com

   127.0.0.1 adobesystems-macromedia.com

   127.0.0.1 wwwaws.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 www.gcommerce.com

   127.0.0.1 www.adobe.ca

   127.0.0.1 www.digitalnegative.net

   127.0.0.1 www.fileline.com

   127.0.0.1 wwwstuff.wip3.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 www.wordsatplay.com

   127.0.0.1 rss.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 access.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 livedocs.macromedia.com

   127.0.0.1 www.openscreenproject.org

   127.0.0.1 livedocs.allaire.com

   127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 blog.kevintowes.ca

   127.0.0.1 w1000.mv.us.adobe.com

   127.0.0.1 www.splatterpunk.com

   127.0.0.1 www.adobeopenhd.co.uk

   127.0.0.1 blog.kevintowes.ca

   127.0.0.1 www.acrobat.us

   127.0.0.1 www.adobe.us

   127.0.0.1 www.adobe.com.hk

5. Save this file (you may be ask to type password for root user)

6. Back to Terminal, issue these commands (Once again you have to enter root password when asked). You need to follow each command and make sure each line is run successfully before trying next command

   sudo dscacheutil -flushcache cd "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PCD/cache" rm "cache.db" cd "/Library/Preferences" rm -R "FLEXnet Publisher" 7. Done now, just try to run any CS4 applications. You may need to enter serial key for initial run.

Okay folks, hope this will solve your CS4 installation problem.