Has my license expired?

[Lyric]

I tried to open Elements 4 and it said "Your Adobe Photoshop Elements user name, organization, or serial number is missing or invalid. The application cannot continue and must now exit."

I have had this program for exactly a year so I think my license might have expired. Does that usually happen? I asked on other forums and they just said to uninstall and reinstall it. That would be easy, except for the fact that when I go into "Add or Remove Programs" (Windows XP) the "change/remove" button has disappeared!

One user told me that I might have a registry cleaner that accidentally removed the serial number. I doubt it.

Is there any way to get a new license or somehow get Photoshop working again?

[vawitt]

Never heard of this before....have you run a virus check?

I'd contact Adobe and see what they can help you do...

~Val in steamy IL

[jlwilm]

Hi Lyric,

The license does not expire. Something has corrupted the serial number information. There have been previous threads that have discussed this issue

I have not been able to determine what the corrective action is, but if you do a thread search on "or serial number is missing or invalid" you will find them.

Most of them seem to say call Adobe for technical support. :twisted:

More Info

Most of the recomendations seem to be to remove/uninstall Elements and thn reinstall from scratch. This will not affect your pictures, tags or catalog. They are separate from Adobe Elements software.

The issue is though, something corrupted this info and it may happen again. The most seemly culprit appears to be a registry cleaner.

[Wendy]

hi Lyric ...

... and welcome to the forum :)

Do let us knoiw how you go on with it ..

Wendy

[TonyW]

Here's the tech note relating to registry cleaners that cause the problem.

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=329663&sliceId=2

Tony

[RobertSchuldenfrei]

Hi Lyric & NG,

Welcome to the friendly newsgroup (NG). I too would like to chime in with the idea that something has corrupted your computer. If you are using Windows let me put in a plug for the new Windows Vista. Usually I am on the other side of the fence dumping all over Vista. I have posted a number of messages call "Vista blues." However, one of Vista's strong points is it tries to protect you from yourself. It makes it hard to load "malware." The combination of Norton 360 and Windows Vista keeps your system fairly clean. Let us know how this issue works itself out.

Cheers,

Bob

[NickLewis]

For what it's worth, I regularly use JV16 Powertools 2006 to clean my registry, with no observed ill-effects - on PSE or anything else.

Your mileage may vary of course. And my machine may stop after the next sweep....:eek:

Nick

[RobertSchuldenfrei]

Hi Nick & NG,

I have had to edit the Windows Registry a time or two, but I would really not like to have to do it. I only needed to do it with XP once and not at all with Vista... Yet. Why do you need clean your Registry?

Cheers,

Bob