Installed 10.6.3 and now Photoshop CS3 won't open

it was always my impression that it's legal for you the change a HD, Besides the HD has nothing to do with the serial number. the number is installed in the mother board. As far as I'm concerned, you shouldn't have to tell the techs anything except that the number is missing and need to be replaced.

I'll be pretty livid with both Apple and Adobe if such an expensive and important set of apps can be left broken for months. In fact this may be a breakage of EU consumer law, which states that products must be fit for purpose up to six years post purchase.

There's no way I'm going to let it rest at the apps I spent thousands on all being left unusable.

Neither is it the end users responsibility to haul their machine to an Apple store to get hardware changed. These apps were broken with a software update, so they must be able to repair it with a software update too.

There must be folks from Adobe and Apple reading this thread, so could I ask in all respect to your customers, is a patch planned to fix this problem or are you simply letting us twist in the wind?

Exactly what I thought. A software update messed it up then another Software update should fix it. Personally I think it should be something Apple should fix since the update somehow changed CS3's method of checking the serial #. But then again thats something Adobe can easily do as well so CS3 can adapt to whatever apple changed in 10.6.3.

With the relationship between Apple & Adobe on the last straw, who knows who'll do what & when.

Shame theres no Apple Techs or someone from AppleCare who can take the time and directly address this matter on here.

My wife had similar problems with PhotoShop CS3 on her iMac, I verified and fixed permissions, ran PhotoShop through the Apple developer tool "instruments" and see that it's having problems accessing sqlite3 files it creates in /tmp/FLEXNet folder, but I have no idea how to resolve them.

She just got off the phone with Adobe tech support and their claim is that CS3 is not compatible with 10.6.3 and that she needs to "downgrade" her computer to make it work again. This is very not cool.

Interesting you should mention the serial number. If you go into the About This Mac... and Click More Information, even apple's tool can't show you the serial number. So, ya, I think Apple does need to fix this...

This is simply not true. I am running 10.6.3 as well as the full CS3 suite and it works just fine. The problem, as has been noted above, is the lack of the serial number. I had a motherboard swap a year ago and the tech folks didn't put the serial number back in (which can be seen - or not seen- in the System Profiler). I took it back, they put in the serial number and everything has been perfectly fine since. CS3 runs without problem in 10.6.3 as long as the serial number is there.

AND as long as Rosetta is not in use. My serial number is fine, but I had to turn off Rosetta. There are two causes of the error.

Confirm. I didn't have any problem with my iMac and motherboard but I was affraid a little before decided to upgrade to 10.6.3 today. Downloaded. Installed. And... Photoshop and Illustrator works perfect - no errors, no crashes.

I worked in software for a long time, and from reading the symptoms it seems like the following happened:

(1) Adobe saw that Apple's system serial numbers have 12 characters.

(2) Adobe's software provided space (called "a buffer") for no more than 12 characters.

(3) Adobe's software called Apple's software asking for the serial number.

(4) Prior to 10.6.3, Apple's software never gave Adobe's software more than 12 characters, no matter how many characters were actually stored as the serial number. Starting in 10.6.3, Apple changed the behavior and started to return more than 12 characters if there were more than 12 stored.

(5) When Adobe's apps run in 10.6.3, Adobe or Apple tries at some point to copy the long serial number into Adobe's 12 character buffer, causing what is called a "buffer overrun". A buffer overrun is like pouring pouring more than a pint of beer into a one-pint glass. Just as the beer would flow out of the glass, and onto the counter, customer, floor, and everywhere else creating a big mess, so the too-long serial number overflowed Adobe's buffer, destroying important data when it did so. With the data destroyed, Adobe's software could not keep running, and so it crashes and burns.

Now, whose fault is this? Well, as of 2006, it was Apple's stated policy that applications should not make assumptions about the length or composition of serial numbers. Adobe did so. Bad for Adobe. However, Apple's tech people aren't supposed to give people computers with invalid serial numbers either. Apple's tech people did so. Bad for Apple.

So what's the best solution? Well, both parties should clean up their act. Apple should fix the serial numbers. Adobe should fix the software. Finger-pointing is not particularly helpful and it doesn't look like either party has anything to be proud of here. Tomorrow I'm taking my computer in to get the serial number fixed. If Adobe ever releases a patch, I'll be glad to download it.

Message was edited by: Bowen Simmons

To an extent, I agree with you. But to write your software so that it is subject to undetected and destructive buffer overruns is just plain stupid. Schools used to teach to check for that in programming 101. Perhaps Adobe has been hiring ex-Microsoft employees (that being one of the favorite methods to introduce malware into MS code)? The fix under this scenario is all Adobe's.

Of course Adobe's software shouldn't crash. Buffer overruns are Bad Things. That isn't a good reason though to not go ahead and fix a bad serial number in your computer.

That said, Adobe does have a very serious potential problem if Apple is about to release GOOD serial numbers that are more than 12 characters long. It won't just be computers crashing with CS3 that weren't properly serviced. It will be ALL computers with CS3 and the new, long serial numbers and there will be no user work-around.

Message was edited by: Bowen Simmons

How does one turn off Open in Rosetta?

1. click on your photoshop application

2. get info by holding command key.and pressing letter " i "

3. info window will appear

4. just check box to (open using ( Rosetta )

I will verify that CS3 works properly after the serial number is restored to its original number.

As for the discussion on who's going to fix it, Apple is seeding 10.6.4 to developers, who indicated that it contains a fix. No timeline yet for release, though.

I had the problem, I reinstall all CS3 2X then realized that the problem might be rosetta.

What to do:
Open info of Photoshop app. (cmd - i ) then unmark "open with rosetta" that all!

Then Photoshop will start as usual..

ab.