So there I was, starting up one of my computers first thing on monday morning, typical start of a long and busy work-week. This was my XP desktop and once windows was finally loaded, I double clicked the Flash CS4 icon on my desktop. Instead of the pretty red splash screen I immediately got the unexpected “License Expired” alert instead. The only option was to close it. I tried launching Flash again and again and got the same exact alert message. This was weird! I have a full licenced copy of the Adobe CS4 Master Collection – this shouldn’t be happening months after installation. What added to the weirdness was that I could launch any of the other programs that are a part of the Master Collection (Photoshop, Illustrator, Fireworks, etc).

Being an Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) member, I am lucky enough to have inside access to the ACE forums and posted my unfotunate and unexpected predicament to the powers that be and the Adobe community at large. I was quickly contacted by San Khong of Adobe support who helped me troubleshoot the issue through the use of some log files on my hard drive.

Here’s the fix:

What’s happening is that when the users uninstalled the CS4 pre-release, they did not Deactivate and Erase the serial number.  If they then bought a suite, it has a different LEID and does not over-write the beta serial.

The solution?

1)      Set clock back to May 31, 2009 (the last known working date)

2)      Launch affected product

3)      Help->Deactivate, Select ERASE THIS SERIAL NUMBER

4)      Quit product.

5)      Fix Date

6)      Launch

7)      Product will now pick up suite serialization and everything will be fine.

Thanks San!