I’ve spent a lot of time this week trying to install Adobe Creative Suite 4 on my work machine. I was the last of four of us on a group license to install it. And I was the lucky one who ran into problems with the installation.

Specifically, when I got past entering the serial number and telling the installer where to install the programs, I got to a page saying “Preparing to Install…” The Install button was disabled for about ten seconds, and then it was enabled. If I clicked it, the same thing happened. It was one of those “how to keep an idiot busy” situations.

I installed Windows XP Service Pack 3 and got some help disabling the anti-virus software on the computer (which I didn’t have rights to do). So if you encounter this problem, try these first (if you’re running Vista, try Service Pack 1).

After trying a lot of different things with one of my department’s technical support reps, we managed to install Fireworks only. After that, I could install Dreamweaver and Acrobat 9. But nothing else would go. I even tried searching on Adobe’s site for some information and found a forum thread that wasn’t completely resolved.

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