Need to reactivate some programs after restoring ?

After successful restore some programs need to be reactivated (validated) again. For example Adobe Photoshop 8.0. Why ?

 

Did you put it back on the same disk and no changes to any of the hardware? Was Photoshop the only one that complained?

According to my friend who is a Photoshop user, Adobe's reactivation requirements are a real pain, makes Microsoft's look non-existant. He updated the firmware in a CD drive and Photoshop choked on it. Supposedly, the new version of Photoshop is supposed to be more relaxed on activation requirements.

 

You would need to supply more details.
What kind of backup did you restore from: File/Partition/Disk?
Did you restore to the exact same location that the image was created from?
Did you uninstall the app after creating the image? Or relocate it to a different path?

 

It happens every time after restoring from whole drive image. There`s no need to reinstall Ptotoshop to work, as reactivation is simple and fast. In addition, Photoshop is the only software that complaints. However it would be usefull to know why it is necessary at all. And it can be alway replicated. Here are the instructions:

Verify that Photoshop loads and works well;
Make the whole drive image (~ 6 GB in my case) in 4.7 GB splits ;
Burn it on 2 DVD-RWs;
Do the restore of whole drive from the former image;
After reboot on the first run Photoshop complaints that something was changed and offers reactivation.

Could it be due to deletion of partitions during restoring as Photoshop might keep some info on previous partition numbers ?

 

First, just to eliminate any problem unrelated to the restore, have you launched PhotoShop, quit, re-booted and launched again?
If everything works OK, the only thing I can think of is a time-stamp problem of some sort. Since you are, in essence, going back in time by restoring, perhaps some logging feature in PS recognizes this and complains.
We used to run a mainframe application at work that never liked it when we set the clocks back for Daylight Savings. We would have to shut this app down, wait at least 1 hour 1 minute, and then set the clock back and start the app back up. This app did not like being started up before it thought it had last been shutdown.

 

Hello everyone,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that this issue is known. However, it is not related to Acronis software, but to some Adobe Photoshop copy-protection peculiarities.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

After cloning (not restoring) my image, I also had to reactivate PlexTools XL and InstallShield Express 11. Plextools had no problem, whereas InstallShield did, saying it had already been activated. After a few emails and a service call, I was finally able to get it activated. So, if you have InstallShield 11 or above, UNINSTALL before cloning. I cloned a WD 250GB to a WD 150GB using TI 8.0.937. Restores don't seem to cause an activation problem with these 2 programs.