Reinstalling CS2 Upgrade

[Rich_...@adobeforums.com]

I had an experience today which caused my formerly high opinion of Adobe customer service and technical support to fall considerably.

By way of introduction, I'm mostly retired but do occasional freelance consulting to supplement my meager income. In January 2001 I had purchased Photoshop 6.0 (PS6), which in January 2006 I upgraded to Creative Suite 2.0 Standard (CS2). The latter has met my needs well.

Last week, my old desktop computer died. This week I bought a new one, and I've had to reinstall everything onto the new one. That went well until I came to CS2. After I entered my license serial number, I got the screen shown in Figure 1: <http://www.richpasco.org/tech/adobe/cs2upg/Figure%201.png> Fair enough. I inserted my PS6 CD into my CD-ROM drive--see Figure 2 <http://www.richpasco.org/tech/adobe/cs2upg/Figure%202.png> ticked "An Adobe Photoshop CD has been inserted" and clicked "Next." However, the installer would not proceed. It simply returned to the screen of Figure 1, no matter how many times I clicked "Next."

I called Adobe Tech Support at 1-800-642-3623 after a while was connected to a man who called himself "John." He spoke with an Indian accent, so I imagine he was at a call center in India.

"John" asked me for my full name, customer ID number, phone number, and e-mail address (all of which I provided) but he would not tell me his full name or any other way to reach him directly. The asymmetry between his anonymity and my full disclosure was striking.

I described the installation problem as above and asked John for his help. He refused. He said flatly and curtly "CS2 is not supported any more; only CS3 and CS4 are. You need to upgrade."

I politely noted that I didn't need any of the features of CS4, although I'm sure they're wonderful, I can't afford to, I just want to continue to utilize my investment in CS2. I explained that I'd had the same problem last year when reinstalling after a system crash, and when I phoned in then, the agent gave me a temporary code that let me proceed. "John" was unimpressed and simply repeated that "CS2 is not supported any more." End of discussion. "Thank you for Calling Adobe and have a nice day." Click.

Speaking "creative," after John hung up, I got creative and figured out my own solution: I set my CS2 disks aside and performed a full installation of PS6 from the CD which was still in my drive (see Figure 2 again). Then I tried again to install the CS2 upgrade. This time it worked: since PS6 was now installed on my system, I did not get the screen of Figure 1, but instead the installation completed normally. Then I went to Control Panel "Add or Remove Programs" and uninstalled PS6, since its job was now done.

This work-around was time consuming but it did accomplish what I needed.

I really don't understand why "John" would not give me the temporary code as was done last year, or why he did not suggest the work-around I created on my own. I understand that Adobe, like every company, needs to cut costs in this economy, but to me, John's refusal to help is poor economy, in terms of the ill will it created for me. You can imagine how I will relate this story to my friends and invite them to join me in reconsidering whether Adobe software is a worthwhile investment.

Thank you for reading, and please feel free to forward this to anyone who can make a difference.

[boblevine]

There was known issue with the CS2 installer. When using a DVD drive it
won't recognize the earlier version CDs. You already discovered one
workaround...the other is to swap out the drive with a CD drive.

Bob

[Dov Isaacs]

Rich,

You certainly should not have been treated this way by anyone at Adobe, either an employee or someone working on our behalf. And it is outrageous that this representative refused to identify himself. I will pass this posting along to the corporate management of this team. If you ever encounter anything like this in the future, please ask for a supervisor and report the problem.

Again, sorry for this unfortunate manner in which you, a value customer, were treated.

- Dov

[Rich_...@adobeforums.com]

Thank you, Robert. So it's a "known issue." I just wish that John had said so and suggested either or both of your workarounds.

And thank you, Dov. I appreciate your understanding, and hope that it may help corporate management to improve the service to the next customer who calls with the same problem.