Calling all computer techies .... HELP

[phillipb]

Some time ago I tried to install a trial version of Photoshop CS but at the end of the installation, the program wouldn't run because the trial run had expired. Since then I've tried downloading a fresh demo from adobe and I've tried some others found on magazine cover disks but the same thing happens.
Obviously something is left into the registry to stop me from continuosly re-installing the program.
Does anyone know how I could fix this?
I would like to see how the new raw plug-in works.

[gstark]

Is there a full uninstaller available from Adobe? Not the uninstall utility that's provided with the product, but one that clears the registry completely? Look around Adobe's website and see what you can find.

Alternately, install a program that monitors your registry access, and use that to trap when CS tries to access the registry, noting the key that it's accessing. By carefully monitoring this activity, you should be able to identify the offending entries so that you can manually clean them and redo the installation.

[phillipb]

Thanks Gary, do you know the name of any such programs?

[Greg B]

Phillip, be vary careful if you are thinking of making adjustments to anything in the registry, it is not an area for the faint of heart. You can back the registry up, make sure you do that immediately before you do anything.

I am sure that Adobe have anticipated that people may try and tweak the registry to overcome the expired trial period issue, so it is unlikely to be a simple prospect. And strictly speaking, it would be a copyright breach. I am not sure whether changing the date setting of your computer would be a copyright breach, but it probably would be. And it might not work.

[gstark]

Phillip,

Take note of Greg's warnings with respect to playing with the registry.

The one that immediately springs to mind is Spy++, but if you don't have Visual Studio, you probably won't have access to this.

Perhaps googling for "registry" might help, and I suspect that http://www.sysinternals.com will probab;ly have something that will be of use here.

Regarding copyright, I'm not entirely in agreement with Greg, but I do understand from whence he's coming. Certainly, if you're wanting to break into the program to bypass the licensing system, then yes, you'll most likely be in breach of the law. But if you're simply trying to evaluate the program, and the software authors haven't properly cleaned up after themselves following an uninstall, that might present a different legal situation.

To my mind, software publishers who don't clean up their own mess after an unstall are not behaving in an appropriate manner.

[phillipb]

You're probably right Gary, I read somewhere else that if you try to change the system date, it will automatically expire the trial even if you are on your first few days.
No point in asking Adobe, they have no way of knowing wether I'm genuine or trying to pull a fast one on them.
Oh well I guess I'll stick with PS7 and NC4

[gstark]

Do you have access to another pc that you can install it on?

We have several at home, and for my development work (and testing of it) we can revert to virgin installations of W98, W2K or XPPro in a matter of minutes.

[phillipb]

I have a P11 laptop which I recently bought to archive all my photos but I don't think it's powerfull enough to run CS.

[jdear]

I had a CS trial version installed on my computer. It ran out. Later i did a full reformat of my HD, and reinstalled Xp etc cos things were running slow. Reinstalling CS didnt work it had still expired. I suspect even traces are left in RAM, and fragments on the HD, which could well be read as unreadable, but yest still adobe can access them or something hightech.

I did author a multimedia cdrom using mm's director a few months ago. there is quite a huge amount of software locking tools available upon authoring time. Software which can lock your authored software using a combination of hardware serial numbers, passwords, encryptions, etc which would be very hard to workaround.

I did find a crack for CS, but in the end my integrity caught up to me, so i went back to version 7 which we have a license for. Yes i lose the nice filters, photostitch and RAW support, but my conscience is clean.


JD

[phillipb]

Thanks for that info Jdear, at least you got to see the new filters and raw file support.
On a similar subject, I've come to the decision of not buying anymore overseas magazines for the cover CD contents. They have a similar problem, by the time we get the magazine in Australia, the date has already expired on the trial software. From now on if I want to trial sofware I'll download it straight from their web sites.