software, software development, windows

Adobe CS3 won’t install

122 Comments

Users are complaining that Adobe Creative Suite 3 simply won’t install. I’m one of them, running 32-bit Vista Professional. Pop the DVD in, click Install CS3 Web Premium, setup starts running, then silently closes. No error message, no install either.

Of course I have tried a few things. I’m not the only one struggling: the Adobe user forums are full of similar problems. Note: similar but not identical. There appear to be multiple issues, and not just on Vista but on XP as well. Here are some popular solutions:

I’ve tried the first two without success so far, on two different machines. Next stop tech support.

It looks to me as if Adobe is having Windows Installer issues. Perhaps nobody had time to read and observe the Tao of the Windows Installer. Still, I reckon Adobe could do a better job with the error logging and reporting. There are installer logs by default in \Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Installers\, but mine have nothing helpful; no errors are reported. The Windows installer supports a detailed logging mode, but it seems difficult to enable with this particular installer. The calls to the installer itself are wrapped by some kind of Adobe package manager, and the .msi files are designed to prevent you from opening them directly.

Here’s what I get if I run setup from a command prompt:

Begin Adobe Setup
UI mode: Full GUI
End Adobe Setup. Exit code: 4

Hardly illuminating. If I do the silent mode, I get Exit code: 7 instead.

The bottom line is that I have no clue what is going wrong. Perhaps it is a campaign to promote the Mac version. I’ll keep you posted.

Update

I fixed it. First, the logging was more helpful than I realised at first. In the Installers folder mentioned above, there is a file called:

Add or Remove Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium 1.0.log.gz

I’d not looked at this because I also had a file called:

Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium 1.0.log

It turns out that the former is more useful than the latter. Of course it is compressed in .gz format, which Vista does not understand, but the open source 7-zip archiver takes care of that. So I extracted the log and found this entry:

DEBUG: Error 2739: Could not access JavaScript runtime for custom action Internal Error 2739.

That gave me something to troubleshoot. I soon found this article which says to re-register JScript:

regsvr32 jscript.dll

from an administrator command prompt. I was away; the setup ran fine after that.

Incidentally I did call tech support, but the techie didn’t help directly; he asked me to email the log though, and it was looking at that which gave me the answer. Now I can get on with the review…

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122 thoughts on “Adobe CS3 won’t install”

  1. If you go back to the original post, notice that it includes guidance on viewing the setup log. That’s the first place to look for discovering what is going wrong.

    Tim

  3. Sadly this solution doesn’t work for me.
    When I hit setup, it initializes, and then the setup window appears for a second or so and it disappears again. Just like you described above.
    I am on Windows XP Professional. I did everything under the administrator account. I tried registering jscript.dll and the vbscript.dll. They both register just fine. I tried shutting of all services except Windows Installer through msconfig (read somewhere that that might be a solution). Of course I removed every trace of Adobe products through the adobe clean up script and a registry sweep.
    I also deinstalled any installed printer because I read somehwere that that could help as well.
    When I run setup from the command line, I get:

    Begin Adobe Setup
    UI mode: Full GUI
    End Adobe Setup. Exit code: 0

    This suggests a succesfull install, while setup didn’t even get to run for more than a second!
    Looking through both setup logs (the unpacked one and the packed one) I cannot find a single error reference.

    Anybody anymore ideas?

    Daan

  4. Daan

    Seems to be a different problem to the one I had.

    You could try running msizap (also known as the Windows Installer Cleanup utility):

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301

    You could check for any Adobe entries that might need removing. Note that this is a risky utility, in that it removes items from the Installer database but does not remove any other files, so use with care.

    Otherwise … call support.

    Tim

  5. Tried that too. Both options. Cleanup utility from microsoft is also needed to run Adobe’s cleanup program. Customer support ran out of ideas. They asked me to change the system language even, but that didn’t help either :S
    I am stuck. They would look into it… Wonder how long that is gonna take.
    If you have any more ideas, those would be greatly appreciated 🙂

    Daan

  6. At last! I’ve found a solution on this page:
    http://www.deploymentpro.com/forum/showthread/9/Problems_with_installing_Adobe_Creative_Suite_3

    The solution goes as follows:

    “This solution posted by gorodek on the Adobe forums helped me out with the problem where the installer just dies with no error message or warning.

    1. Start the Setup as usual and let it copy over a few files and than – after a short popup – let him disappear. There shouldn’t be any other errors except the described above, otherwise you have to deal with these first (eg. run the cleanup script, if the setup complains about an already running installation etc).

    2. Now open up your Windows Explorer and go to

    C:Program FilesCommon FilesAdobeInstallersc14ac4070fd9614ffe63f4bb533db2cresourcescommonscripts

    3. Locate a file called “ContainerProxy.js” in the opened Window and open it with Notepad.

    4. Go to line 1102 or simply search for
    “jsonObj = _jsonToObject(window.external.SetSessionInitialized(initValue));”

    and replace this line with

    “jsonObj = _jsonToObject(SetSessionInitialized(initValue));”

    5. Save the file.

    6. Startup up the installation process by launching Setup.exe from this folder:

    C:Program FilesCommon FilesAdobeInstallersc14ac4070fd9614ffe63f4bb533db2cresources

    This time the installer shouldn’t quit and hopefully you will be able to install.
    ”
    —————————

    The random hex-number differs on each system I found out. Now Setup runs. Let’s hope I don’t run into any other problems.

  8. I also contacted Adobe support to tell them about it. They haven’t heard of that solution. It would be good if there were a website with all those solutions grouped together for potential disasters during installs.
    Anyways, thanks for the help and your blog is wonderful!
    Regards,
    Daan

  9. thanks that was really helpful…. I couldnt have worked it out by myself

    David C (you know me :p)

  14. Thank you so much i was loosing sleep over this problem. I tried nearly everything with most other websites sheeding no light at all. It would have taken me ages to think of checking this up myself.
    Much Appreciated

  15. hello! i am have been struggling for days with a very similar adobe-cs problem as all of you have had. except in my situation, some of the cs3 programs DO get installed (acrobat 8.0, reader 8.0) before i get an error message just like yours.
    would your solution also be applicable to my problem?
    also, at what point in the installation procedure should i run the setup log that you are talking about? before running the cs3 cd? or when it gives me the error message back?
    any comments/advice would be GREATLY appreciated by this computer-programming-illiterate designer!
    🙂

  16. Hi,

    I have followed these steps and still no luck. I am trying to install Adobe Indesign CS3. When running the setup from the command prompt, I get:

    Begin Adobe Setup
    UI mode: Full GUI
    End Adobe Setup. Exit code: 4

    Also, I get a file created called Ahmbed.gz and in it:

    [ 3924] Tue Jan 22 22:14:12 2008 INFO
    ——————– BEGIN – Proxy File Summary – BEGIN ——————–
    ——————– END – Proxy File Summary – END ——————–
    ——————– BEGIN – Updating Media Sources – BEGIN ——————–
    Updated source path: D:InDesign
    ——————– END – Updating Media Sources – END ——————–
    *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*
    END – Installer Session
    *=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*

    Can anyone offer any advice on what I should do?

  17. I can’t believe adobe, hasn’t bothered to handle this yet. The product has been out for over a year. Probably should wait for CS4, maybe they will get it straight by then

  18. Many thanks, Tim!

    For the last few weeks Adobe Updater kept popping up to tell me to update to ExtendScript 2.0.2 (I had never even heard of ExtendScript before! I guess it came with Photoshop CS3) and it kept downloading the 30MB update, flashing a progress bar in my face and then telling me the update couldn’t be installed for my product.

    Registering jscript.dll solved the problem completely! I never would’ve thought to do that.

    I don’t know whose fault it is that the jscript.dll registry entries were damaged or missing but, given how many people this seems to have affected in one way or another, I do have to wonder WTF Adobe didn’t update their installer/updater to repair the situation or at least tell the user what needed to be done. Incredible. I kind-of expect more from a product that costs as much as Photoshop + upgrades.

    Anyway, thanks again for sharing the info on how to make the problem go away!

  19. thanks.. workd like magic… untill installation was completed.. then it said that it could not install most of the programs because of error with components…
    now what do I do?

  20. I can install all modules of CS3 design standard except for acrobat pro 8. It goes throught the enitre install but fails to install acrobat. Any ideas? i have change permissions in the registry, ran script files to cleanup, can’t resolve it.

  21. hey, I stumbled across your site while in irritation mode. I’m on a Mac G4 dual processor, 512mgs RAM, using system 10.4.11 and what makes you think CS3 always installs on a Mac? I’m sitting here with a pretty box and no install. The installer doesn’t even start; clicking on the set up file according to the readme brings up an error message saying, “You must update your system software prior to installing CS3” but my system software is beyond the 10.4.6 required. Got any ideas? Thanks for all the random acts of kindness above, dude.

  22. You sir have my thanks. I followed your instructions and FINALLY my Photoshop installs.

  23. just adding my thanks to everyone else’s, your solution worked perfectly, i’d have spent days on this and still not worked it out without your website!

  24. Thanks, not only for sharing the solution but also how you got there. Saved me a lot of pain!

  25. Yo…thanks.
    Had exact same problem, googled it came across this page and fixed in 5 mins.

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