Installed Photoshop cc 2014 asks for serial # - corrupted Windows file permissions

Question

More of a warning / heads up to all than a question - installing Photoshop cc 2014 [via the CC manager app] caused some Windows file (security) permissions to become corrupt corrupt on my system. Symptoms include cc2014 asking for serial number validation on startup (when, as a cloud version, it should not do so), then being unable to connect to the internet when you press the 'validate serial' button so getting that window into infinite loops, and - a real pain in the *** when trying to fix the above - causing abends of some windows shell functions that in turn cause windows explorer to crash and restart.
Anyhow, digging into this (fortunately, I am a long time Windows SysProg) I discovered that for reasons unknown, either the CC master app or the actual Photoshop cc2014 installer (or both) are changing file access control permissions on a number of files, mostly DLL's. Most of the files affected are in the (normally hidden) Program Data directory on the windows root disk, Some of them are in the Adobe subdirectory - so fair enough if they want to fool around with their own program - but others being changed are in the Common Files and Microsoft subdirectories. I cannot for the life of me figure out why this is necessary nor why Adobe feel the need to touch files that 'do not belong' to them - something dangerous in the extreme as an external app such as Windows Update might replace or 'repair' the files so touched, and if Adobe / CC are relying on file permissions on non-Adobe files, such changes could result in all manner of random and spurious problems / error messages occurring.
Anyhow, if, fellow Photoshop cc 2014 user, you get this happen to you then you can fix the file permissions by opening a console window [also called a "DOS box", or "command prompt" depending on your age and knowledge... 8-) ] and run the windows file checker with the command
"sfc /scannow". Make sure that you use 'run as administrator' to open the console window, or you'll get an error about sfc only being available to administrators. Also a very (very) sensible idea to close all non-essential running applications first to prevent any possibility of weird interactions happening.
Finally, check that the 'hosts' file in [root drive]:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc is valid - for some reason, it looks like the install tried to check or update this file (again, I have no idea why) but the result was a corrupted hosts file, which I assume is the root cause of the 'unable to connect to host' type internet error messages. Copy the file, rename it as 'hosts.txt' and edit it with notepad or wordpad. Look for lines containing garbage strings at the bottom of the file  (any line that starts with a # ignore, it is a comment, and any line that has IP addresses or host names should be ignored - though if they reference a site such as "someserver.adobe.com" you might want to treat them with suspicion if you continue to get internet 'cant connect to site' type errors.
Anyhow, when I fixed these two sets of problems, Photoshop cc 2014 started 'right first time' without all the BS messages about serial numbers etc.
Hope this helps somebody out there in AdobeLand......
Rick

Answer 1

Update: I tried several times to reproduce the error, actually it dosen't occur. I changed nothing on my system, without reboot it twice. This is what I said in my beginning times: it occurs sometimes but often. I will keep you up to date.