Expert: LizaL - 9/28/2004

Question
Hi ... We're working on Mac computers (Powerbook G3)  and received our original Photoshop software (v4.0) came installed on this computer when we purchased it.  The original install disks were not included.  That was never a problem for us and we upgraded to 5.0 and then to 5.0.2.  Recently, the computer died and we upgraded to a G4.  But when we went to install Photoshop, it's asking for the original 4.0 version.  Is there any way around this?  Thanks!

Answer
Hi Jill,

I can sympathize with your problem -- it's happened to me before and it's a pain, huh. There are a couple of things you can do:

1. If you bought and registered your Powerbook with Apple, go to the Apple site, or call Apple and explain to them what happened. They can (and will) send you a copy of your original installation CDs. Even if you bought this Mac from someone else, and you registered it with Apple, you can still get Apple to send you those CDs. But having registered is the key here.

2. Did you happen to register your copy of Photoshop with Adobe, when you upgraded to v.5? If so, you can do the same thing: Contact Adobe either by phone, email, or through their Web site and explain what happened. But again, you have to be able to prove to them that you are a registered user.

Other than that, I'm not sure what you can do. If that Powerbook died, and there's no way of retrieving anything from it, you wouldn't be able to copy the prefs files from Photoshop 4. I can't swear it would work, but if you had the Preferences from version 4 of Photoshop, you could try installing them on your G4 and see if the Photoshop 5 installation would read them as having the v.4 program resident, and let you install.

Let me know what happens! I'll try and come up with something else if these things don't work. But take it from the voice of experience, LOL, it always pays to register!

Good luck and post back if you need to --

Lisa