We reported earlier this week an issue in which Photoshop CS3 and other Adobe CS3 apps fail to launch under Mac OS X 10.6.3. In some cases, the application launches then immediately quits; in others the dock bounces in the icon and proceeds no further.
Adobe has now addressed this issue in a TechNote, and says that launch will fail on systems “where the system serial number is a value with more than 12 characters. This appears to only be the case when the system serial number doesn’t have a valid number, but instead has a value such as ‘System Serial#’, or ‘SystemSerialNumb.'”
The TechNote echoes two solutions we published in our earlier report: turning off the Rosetta option and reverting to Mac OS X 10.6.2. It also offers a third option: “OBTAIN A NEW SYSTEM SERIAL NUMBER; For assistance with this, please contact Apple or your Apple reseller.”
Some users have already reported success with the replacement serial number solution. Apple Discussions poster Nick Savis writes;
“I took the Mac to the Apple store I bought it from and the tech knew where to find it. The he boots up from a CD containing a special application just for this purpose. It took about 2 minutes. It was free for me because they replaced the mother board and forgot to insert Serial No.”