Photoshop CS2 requires repeat activation

Question

After three years of use, my installation of CS2 has started warning me that the 30 days period for activation has expired and I will need to activate before I can continue to use Photoshop. I have had to re-activate around 8 times now, but activation does not last. After a while, it will not load without yet another activation.
Does anybody know what is happening, and have a fix for this, short of uninstalling and re-installing Photoshop,?
I am using Windows XP2 Home, SP2
Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 @ 3.0 GHz
OCZ 4056MB DDR2 PC7200,
Sparkle GeForce 7950 GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express,
regards,
Peter King

Answer 1

Peter,
Given that you said you have been running a RAID configuration for a 3 years with no CS2 problems, I'm inclined to agree with Rob and Dave about the registry cleaner being the likely culprit. Either that or something may strangely be deleting one of the activation records.
Are you familiar with using the Registry Editor, invoked by entering "regedit" from the Run dialog? If so, here is what I suggest you do while your system is activated:
1. Launch REGEDIT
2. Navigate down the left pane of the Registry Editor to each of the following registry keys (they look like folders). For each, right-click on it and select "Export", and provide a file name. If I anticipate multiple exports as will occur here, I use names such as "pscs2a.reg", "pscs2b.reg", etc. and save them all in a common folder.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe Systems\Common Install\Shared Service\B2B86000]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Adobe Systems\Licenses\Adobe LM Service]
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe\ALM\B2B86000]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{236BB7C4-4419-42F D-0409-1E257A25E34D}]
[HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1202660629-1336601894-839522115-1003\Software\Adobe\ALM\B2B86000]
Note, that last key may not be identical on your PC as on mine, so you might just browse to the [HKEY_USERS] branch and then perform a search on "B2B86000", and export the key associated with the found data.
3. Close REGEDIT
4. Browse in Windows Explorer to the following location:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Adobe Systems\Product licenses
5. Make a copy of the file named B2B86000.dat, perhaps saving it to the same folder as the exported registry keys. This is one of the critical activation hashes for PS CS2; another is in a hidden area of the hard drive boot sector, hence why RAID configurations are at risk of causing problems.
You may not need all the keys identified, but I'm just trying to cover the most likely ones. Some clearly contain activation status information that, if corrupted, might result in the problems you're seeing. In any case, the idea here is that you're creating backup copies of those registry keys and the activation hash.
Now, if another time arises when you're prompted to reactivate, first confirm whether or not the B2B86000.dat file exists in Product Licenses folder of Step 4. If not, restore an instance of it from the copy you made and then launch PS CS2 again to see if the reactivation is prompted. If not, you've solved the question of what is being affected, but you'll still have to try and figure out how; I can't help with that part.
If the B2B86000.dat file is intact, then try restoring the registry keys, perhaps even doing so one at a time with test launches of PS CS2 after each key is restored. Double-clicking the file will prompt whether or not to merge the file into the Windows Registry, so you simply choose "Yes". If you incrementally restore those keys and find that after one of them PS CS2 launches without the activation prompt, then you will know that key and perhaps the ones preceding it, were all needed. At that point, you then would likely need to explore whether your registry cleaner is deleting any of those keys.
Hope that helps,
Daryl