Expert: Kevin Stohlmeyer - 6/30/2008

Question
Hi. Heres my scenario. I had Adobe CS3 Web Premium installed on my machine then uninstalled the lot. I then installed photoshop CS3 and it works fine along with Bridge CS3, Device Central CS3, Stock Photos CS3, and ExtendScript Toolkit 2. Next, was the installation of Illustrator CS2. However, it crashes right at the beginning splash screen where it says "initializing". also, dont receive any error messages here. Has this got sthing to do with the previously installed CS3 products or the current CS3 products installed as mentioned above? I tried reinstalling the product but same result. I thought must be sthing wrong with Illustrator cs2 setup files but tried it on another machine(which didnt have any adobe CS products on it before) and it works fine. Please help me.  

Answer
Hi Edward,

Since Im not sure what operating system you are running on, here's what I can tell you. Uninstalling CS3 is not a clean wipe. It leaves a lot of breadcrumbs (supporting files) after it is uninstalled and is probably interfering with CS2. What you will need to do is uninstall everything and then follow this link for a total uninstall:

http://www.adobe.com/support/contact/cs3clean.html

Then you will have to install CS2 first. Then CS3. Since the CS2 supporting files are older, they do no install if they notice newer files and those files are not compatible. Big mess I know but running two versions of software is never recommended. This should take care of it.

Thanks

Kevin