CS2: You are not allowed to continue because your account does not have the proper privileges.

I have had this software for quite a while and have had no problem. However, all of a sudden whenever I open photoshop cs2 it produces a message box entitled "Adobe Activation" that says: "You are not allowed to continue because your account does not have the proper privileges. Please log in using an account with administrator privileges and try again."

This doesn't really make sense because the whole installation/activation took place on this same user account and it really does have administrator privileges.

I have found people with similar problems in other forums but they are all running Windows Vista and the problem was solved by disabled UAC. However, I am running Windows XP and so have no idea how I can solve this problem.

Has anyone else managed to solve this or know a way to do it?

Thanks,

Liam

This may not help, but just in case, try Resetting Preferences as per the FAQs.

if that doesn't work try installing under a new user name (with admin priv.) that account may have become corrupt. it's not usual, but we've seen it occasionally. sometimes the new account trick works.

sorry are you running XP or Vista? it's not really clear.

Assuming it's Vista I wouldn't disable UAC as it really opens up your machine to masses of security issues. You can set specific processes/programs to run with higher credentials than normal, this avoids the UAC notifications but leaves it doing it's job.

BRETT

Brett, how is it unclear??? I quote from my original message "I am running Windows XP"

liam did you try what ed and i asked you to try in posts 1 & 2? did it work?

tried them but neither worked. It wouldn't even let me install it after I had uninstalled it and displayed the same message during installation. And that was with a new user name with admin privs!! I've given up for now but any help is still welcome.

Liam,

It makes no sense that it could make any difference, but with some earlier version of PS I found that a problem I had was solved only by logging in with the actual "Administrator" user name and performing some PS operations that way. If your normal login is not as Administrator or if you have not renamed "Administrator" to your own preferred user name (some do this for security reasons), then you might try logging in with that specific account. Again, that shouldn't matter, as anyone in the Administrators group should have equal privileges, but I have seen "Administrator" work when other user names would not.

Good luck,

Daryl