March 30th, 2009
Message text:
Licensing for this product has stopped working. This product has encountered a problem which requires that you restart your computer before it can be launched. If you continue to see this message after restarting your computer, please contact either your IT administrator or Adobe technical support for help, and mention the error code shown at the bottom of this screen.
Message interpretation:
Your program refuses to launch because it thinks it is not licensed.
Possible causes:
Licensing errors are quite arbitrary and often do not have a clear cause. This is further complicated by the fact, that the entire system is just a black box you cannot reall look inside, as everything is encrypted. Still, a few things can be made out as reproducible conditions:
You had to restore your operating system after a catastrophic crash. Either it repaired itself, you used a system restore point or re-installed based on the original install media (CD/ DVD).
You changed the size of your partition post-install of an Adobe product using tools like Partition Magicand similar or you changed the file system type.
You restored your system partition from an image backup and in the process changed some system files and the drive’s formatting information. This also is valid for putting image backups on new drives, that have a different physical layout.
You intentionally or accidentally moved or deleted files required by the licensing system, then started one of the applications.
You killed the licensing service or removed one of the files required by it, while an Adobeapplication was active.
There are certainly a couple more, but the long and short of it is, that it always boils down to the licensing system considering your files as tainted, because you tampered with them. It will therefore invalidate the encrypted key and lock the system.
Resolution or workaround:
Adobe provide a few suggestions on their knowledge base for CS 3 and CS 4 products. If those do not bring the relief you hoped for, call Adobe support.
