Completely uninstall Adobe CS5

adobesoftware

I once installed Adobe CS 5 as a Trial but now I pre-ordered the new suite. I've deleted the Adobe CS 5 suite, and installed the new suite. But whenever I try to open photoshop for example, the Software Setup pops up and tells me my trial of CS 5 has expired and I need to enter a serial.
I don't know if it will accept my CS 6 serial, but I first want to get rid of all (!) the CS 5 files.

I've tried the Adobe CS Cleaner tool, deleting the .cache and .pcd file in /Application Support/Adobe/Adobe PCD, but it's still asking for a serial… So I'm guessing there are still some files somewhere.

So, how do I delete ALL files of Adobe CS 5, so I can start over with a fresh copy of CS 6?

Best Answer

I'd start with the actual uninstaller rather than the cleaner.

Adobe does do deep integration, and I've been known to just walk away from machines with too much adobe on them. If you feel the uninstaller isn't getting things clean enough, you can take it a step further as follows:

  • Perform a clean install of the OS
  • use Migration Assistant to bring in the user account rather than setting up a new user on the "clean" Mac
  • download the uninstaller onto the new admin account

At that point, you can run the uninstaller to clean out any ~/Library plugins that might be installed. It's overkill, but sometimes a clean start is better than trying to let uninstallers find every copy of files that have been zipped, moved, linked, etc...