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. You save my day! Tryed to install Adobe CS3 Web Premium for a couple hours till i find this post and wolaa! Thanks for usefull information.

  3. This solution doesn’t work for me 🙁
    Neither does the one provided by Daan =/
    Maybe because it’s not the web premium? (actually, have no idea if it is or not, brother downloaded the trial for me, which won’t even work – damn “Initializing Photoshop CS3” then nothing)

  4. I’ve been struggling for a week to install CS3 on Vista Business 64. It would go through the initial extraction part and crash the installer before it even prompted for serial number. Eventually I went to the folder within the Installers folder (long numeric folder name) and ran the copy it had made of the installer before it crashes.
    It ran fine.

  5. I didn´t know this before and trying to make it work i deleted the adobe folder that is inside common files. Now the setup windows dooesn´t even appear, but it used to do. So the only two files i see after run the setup is Adobe Photoshop CS3 10.log and Adobe Photoshop CS3 10.0.log.gz. What can i do?

  6. hi¡

    first, sorry for my bad english.

    i have yesterday the problem:
    Begin Adobe Setup
    UI mode: Full GUI
    End Adobe Setup. Exit code: 4

    i have installed flash cs3 and it working good but the program close and mark all times that i try open “error”. I try instaled with cd and mark “begin adobe setup”….

    Ect… i try instaled, delete all registred, delete all cs3, ect BUT NOTHING IS VALIDED.

    THE LAST SOLUCTION BEFORE MY SUICIDED was download try version on adobe page. And after 3 hours try all things the program go.

  7. I have a slightly different problem. I have a dell Inspiron 1721 with AMD 64×2 and Vista 32bit home premium. it will install the files but does not ask for my serial number first. then, none of the files will open although I see them in task manager. Adobe support says Amd 64 is the problem. Dell said it I needed more memory. I have 2g. Amd said it has not heard of the problem and they do not believe it is a processor problem. I am ready to explode with rage. By the way, the same disks installed with no problem on my desktop with windows XP. Help someone, please.

  8. Thank you! Been tearing my hair out trying to get Indesign installed, came across your post and I’ve been fixed.

    If you’re ever in Cambridge, England, I shall buy you a beer.

  13. have tried all of the suggested fixes here to no avail. Only thing that has now worked is a complete re-install of Vista. I installed CS3 as the second program only after I had re-installed my firewall and anti-virus software.
    It’s a pretty severe, and extremely annoying step to have to take BUT, it works. CS3 has now correctly installed.
    Adobe are a disgrace given the length of time this problem has been around they have totally failed to take effective action to resolve it!

  16. I have followed the steps as well as the ones given on editing the contents of the containerproxy.js. Now the setup doesn’t even start. I am running Vista Home Basic with VMWare Fusion.

    Any one able 2 help?

  17. I got the exit code: 7 error every time and tryed everyting with no solution. Now I downloaded free text editor “notepad++” and open and saved application.xml.override, install.xml and uninstall.xml.

    It worked!!! no more exit code 7.

  19. Wicked awesome. Smart People! I bought my CS3 Suite from OEM software. Very cost effective source. But there’s a language barrier that hinders support dialog. I’m going to try the XP professional solution Daan discovered. Thank you all so much.

    XP Professional users Check post 31 under this topic.

    Sincerely, Joe Kennedy

    MSDOS 2.X was my first OS
    BASIC my first programming langiage

  20. Windows XP Professional users the Fix offered via Post #31 on this page worked for me. There is one modification to the fix I would like to point out.

    The solution goes as follows:

    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 path:

    C:Program FilesCommon FilesAdobeInstallersc14ac4070fd9614ffe63f4bb533db2cSetup.exe

    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.

    ———-
    Make sure the syntax is exact when you make the java script code modification.

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

    Make sure there’s a space before and after the “=”.

    Thanks again Tim and Daan and all. Now I can take a shower 🙂

  22. Sophi,

    Did you try what is suggested in the first post?

    On XP, Windows key + R, type cmd, press Enter.

    This opens a black command window. Type:

    regsvr32 jscript.dll

    and press Enter.

    Then retry setup.

    On Vista, you need to open a command prompt with administrator rights. Click the Start menu and type “command” into the search box (without the quotes). A shortcut to Command Prompt should appear above. Right-click this shortcut and choose Run as administrator. You will be prompted to approve the action.

    Now you have a command prompt. Type:

    regsvr32 jscript.dll

    and press Enter.

    Then retry setup.

    Tim

  23. it doesnt work 🙁
    keeps saying the setup.exe is not a valid win32 application when i click it

    am i doing something wrong?

  24. keeps saying the setup.exe is not a valid win32 application when i click it

    This suggests a corrupt CD or failing CD drive.

    Tim

  25. Hello Tim..

    I wonder if you could help me with my problem.. As I’m trying to install Photoshop CS3, the actual set-up program won’t run, however I believe that I have previously set-up Photoshop on this PC before. The problem is when I’m trying to run the Photoshop program, an error message appears saying that the program cannot run as Adobelinguistic.dll is missing, replacing this may help. So I have replaced the file several times, and I’m still getting the same error report.

    Any thoughts?

    Many thanks in advance.

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