Well, that thread was an interesting read...the one where Stephanie's commments are referenced. Somehow I either missed it or forgot about it, but it does perhaps explain, at least a little, about why PS CS may sometimes require reactivation following restoration of a drive image and other times not: It may simply depend upon whether or not I've launched PS CS any on the system subsequent to when the drive image was first created. While I don't recall ever selecting any option to either save or restore a master boot record when using Drive Image, I do agree that restoring the MBR should prevent seeing the reactivation prompt. But, I don't like reading how the activation key is updated each time PS CS is launched. To what extent that is necessary if the activation process is to be more "tamper-resistant", I don't know. But, my opinion is that when PS CS is activated, all records of that activation should be generated once and once only, never to be updated. That way, the problems associated with System Restore or drive image restorations should go away I believe.

This doesn't explain away my recent difficulty with my laptop, where restoration of a drive image resulted in not only reactivation being required, but also that it was in turn denied. In that scenario, I had created a drive image, saved it to a secondary partition, reinstalled an old image in trying to isolate a problem, then restored the original image upon deciding the old image wasn't as useful as I thought. Throughout this process, PS CS wasn't launched at all, so that leaves me puzzled as to why the denied activation arose.

Thinking through the scenario, one idea comes to mind...the older drive image from 2002 was created with an older version of Drive Image whereas the current 2004 image was created with Drive Image 7. Although both images were restored with DI7, if the older image somehow updated the MBR but this didn't occur when restoring the current image, then there may well have been a conflict. That is, the 2004 image restoration may have reinstalled any registry and "miscellaneous location" entries of the activation keys, yet the hidden hard drive sector might not have shown any activation hash at all and thus perhaps appeared to be a new hard drive.

If what I conjecture sounds plausible, then it sounds as if the hard drive is one required piece of the activation puzzle, without which the user will be prompted to reactivate. If true, then I offer that is a serious flaw in the activation process. The need for reactivation should always be based upon some sort of truth model where, for example, 4 of 7 hardware IDs must be intact relative to those detected when PS CS was first activated. Of course, if those hardware items are subject to changing periodically, then I can also see why it may be necessary to update the activation key each time PS CS is launched. An update of the key may be needed so that, at any given time, all "7" of those hardware IDs are known for the truth model....and now we're back to the original problem of dynamic activation keys.

As an aside to all this...has anyone had experience with running PS CS where it is installed and activated on each of multiple, removable hard drives that are all used with the same PC? I'd expect to see activation being required initially for each of the hard drives, since each would be seen as a fresh install, yet the activation count should not be increased since all other hardware items are unchanged. But, once installed, there should never be any prompt for a required reactivation when the drives are swapped out.

Heck, let's even put another spin on it...1 fixed drive has PS CS installed on it while the system drive is swappable between a Win2K and a WinXP drive, each of which the PS CS installation was performed on so that all registry entries, system files, and common files are properly in place. I assume the hard drive hash is written on the drive to which PS CS is installed, but obviously the registry entry and, quite likely, the other activation record are both written to the system drive. So, in swapping system drives, 2 of 3 activation records are switched out for possibly different ones. Is that again going to force a required reactivation? If so, there is again a problem in the activation scheme.

This last scenario is presented with the idea in mind of using PS CS on a system where swappable hard drives may be required in order to use the same system across multiple levels of security classification. Such systems typically would not be connected to a public domain where internet access is available, thus reactivation via a phone call might be the only option. However, that would be a huge nuisance if it was a recurring event. Perhaps it is such cases as these where Adobe would have to freely issue some sort of corporate level key that doesn't require activation. I don't know if they have such a key or not, but surely so. I also add that it should be "freely" provided because apart from being a uniquely configured PC, it is still one and the same system apart from a hard drive that gets routinely swapped out. You can't go out and charge more for something merely because a customer is using their PC in a manner that wasn't anticipated. Whether Adobe would or not, I've no idea.

Regards,

Daryl

genkitony

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Photoshop CS Product Activation Loop