Will Adobe CS3+CS4 work in OS above 10.6.8 ?

Thanks for the useful ideas, Eric (if necessary, “run Snow Leopard in a virtual machine”) and Kurt (encouraging about success being a good way to bet, but cautious with no guarantees) and kahjot (re: a possible problem).

I've bought two semi-old fairly cheap machines, one (Macbook) that allows Snow Leopard, and one (Mini) that won't. They're “in the mail” and next week I'll do higher-OS experiments, beginning with Mavericks, hoping everything works.

I may have to do several installations -- with two Macs and at least two OS -- so could this cause problems with install-limits? I think it's been installed 3 times (twice on my 2006 iMac, then once on my 2007 MB Pro that just failed due to a heat-damaged GPU but I have an image of the pre-failure hard disk) with no de-authorizations. I've heard about this limit but know very little about it, just found a page about “Removing Deactivation Limit” that may (or may not) say the limit is off. [how would Adobe do this from afar?] Or is it still on?

kahjot and Kurt, thanks for your help. Since 2008, I've activated CS3 and CS4 on two computers, and both are damaged, perhaps beyond being able to run CS3 and CS4.

In another forum, someone said the de-activation process is: launch a program [any program in CS3, and then in CS4?], click on Help, click on De-Activate (or Transfer Activation), and await a message about success or failure of the action. For both CS3 and CS4, I have my DVDs & Serial Numbers. The problem is "launch", which may not be possible because:

Recently my 2007 Macbook Pro failed (due to heat-damaged GPU) and won't boot, but CS3 and CS4 were working until the failure, and are still on the MB Pro's hard disk, and now on an external hard disk, as a hd-image and as individual files. But the MB Pro cannot boot to run the programs, or access the internet, so how can I make Adobe's servers (on the internet) recognize that "CS3 is running on Craig's MB Pro, and he is deactivating CS3 on this MB Pro"?

My 2006 iMac works (CPU, etc) but CS3 & CS4 were not on the computer, after a new system-install, when the iMac was damaged in a way making it impossible to access a DVD Player, either internal or external. Thus, I cannot install. Could the iMac launch a CS3 program (and then CS4 program) from the external hard disk (using CS3 and CS4 from the hard disk of my Macbook Pro) and, because it's running on the iMac, Adobe sees this and recognizes my de-activation request?

Is there any way to de-activate both of these computers?

After writing the two paragraphs below, with questions, I reached a conclusion: Probably the easiest way to know is to just do the experiment -- I call Adobe, explain the situation, and say "confirmation from a legitimate repair service is available if necessary."

And here were my questions:

If "with neither Mac working... you can't [de-activate]," then maybe I can have an expert repair person (Matt at MacHelpOC) confirm the failed Macbook Pro, since he now has it and knows it's failed. And I can bring in the iMac to show him that it cannot access any DVD, internal or external. Do you think his confirmation would be necessary, or helpful, or would Adobe just take my word for it?

How would each computer be identified in Adobe's database? Could he easily get this ID (a number, or whatever it is) from each computer? Or could he just say "Craig used to have 2 computers on which he ran CS3 & CS4, and now he has none"?

Yesterday the Macbook arrived (made in 2008, so it runs 10.6.8), and two installs (CS3, CS4) were successful. For the next set of installations,* if Adobe requires a de-activation would the following plan work?

____My conclusion, after writing the paragraphs below, is "probably not" because (if Adobe doesn't check to see what computer CS is activated on) accepting this kind of de-activation would make it easy for someone to fake a de-activation by cloning the hard disk of a still-working computer, de-activating CS3/4 on that cloned disk-image, then continue using CS3/4 on the still-working computer and also (because they have fooled Adobe into thinking it's not active) an extra computer, using only one of the two activations. So this probably isn't allowed by Adobe. If necessary, probably I'll just have to contact Adobe, with the repairman to confirm the failure of my Macbook Pro with one of the CS3/4 installations.

____Well, here was the idea:

____My recently failed Macbook Pro had CS3 and CS4 installed. The repairman recovered the entire hard drive (200 GB) and put it onto an external hard drive (4000 GB) as individual files and also as a cloned disk-image. To de-activate, could I re-start the new computer in the old 10.6.8 (with "Startup Disk" in System Preferences) using this disk image, open Dreamweaver-CS3 (then deactivate) and Fireworks-CS4 (then deactivate)? Would the CS3 and CS4 on this disk-image be recognized by Adobe as being "one of my previous installs" that therefore would not count as being active, after they're deactivated?

____How to do this? I don't know much about clones. To get the old CS3/CS4 "recognized by Adobe" would this require putting the cloned "old Macbook Pro" into its own partition of a hard disk? Or could I just start from the individual files of the un-cloned OS? (In "System Startup" today, on another external hard disk I saw an OS 10.6.3 from a backup many years ago. I could choose it and re-start in 10.6.3, but... my question is about how to re-start so Adobe recognizes the old CS3/CS4 as a "previous activation on the old Macbook.") Or maybe I could connect the hard disk with this cloned "old Macbook Pro" to my old half-working iMac, and de-activate CS3/4 from the iMac.

___ * The 2012 Mac Mini should arrive today, but I won't try CS3/CS4 on it (to see if it will install, and will run OK on 10.9.5) until later. After doing the experiments, I'll report back about the results.