Adobe CS Activation

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The Adobe Creative Suite (CS) Support Page Stating The Shutdown of Some of It's Activation Servers.

Adobe CS (Creative Suite) was a suite of applications that existed from 2003 until 2013 when Adobe replaced it with the new Adobe CC (Creative Cloud) suite of applications. CS had 7 major versions CS, CS2, CS3, CS4, CS5, CS 5.5 & CS6. When Adobe introduced the Creative Suite in 2003 with the Adobe CS Suite they added online activation which was not required on their older products. The software would connect to Adobe's servers to verify the serial number and unlock it for use. However, due to "aging activation servers", Adobe has shut down the activation servers for many versions of their CS suite CS1 though CS5 with CS 5 being included in this recently as of February 2025. The applications can no longer be installed, reinstalled or activated even if the user has the original install media such as installation disks or an old downloaded installer. (Adobe has made this clear on their website here) When the installer is run from any source the setup program will try to contact Adobe either during the installation or after when the user tries to run the applications for the first time to verify their serial number. When this happens the setup program will fail to contact Adobe as the server it uses for serial number verification has been shut down. After trying for a few seconds or minutes the setup program will display an error as it cannot contact the activation servers and the applications will not be activated rendering them in a essentially inoperable state. On this page, Adobe informs the status of these products but as of February 2025 it has not been updated to include CS5 as included in the shutdown. Users who purchased this rather expensive powerful software can no longer use what they purchased due to the company not wanting to maintain the older servers. In Adobe Forums, some users claim that Adobe sent them emails stating the shut down and provided modified installers for these applications that no longer required activation. However, many users state that they never were contacted. Back in the day, registering applications was an optional thing, so many users didn't bother registering these products. Only the users who registered the product and still had up-to-date contact information were contacted.