Win 8.1 on 2 machines causing Adobe CC issues

[Phillip Jones]

Machines: laptop on Win 8.1 and desktop on Win 8.1
Software: Adobe CC
Conflict: Win 8 created a dependency for Adobe CC that requires both machines to be running

A few months ago, I purchased a new Cyber PC laptop w/ Win 8.1. I subscribed and installed Adobe CC (PhotoShop, Bridge, LightRoom, etc...). All is well on the laptop.

Last week, I built a new PC w/ Win 8.1 and logged into my Microsoft account with same login that I used for my new laptop to activate Win 8.1. Since my Adobe CC subscription covers 2 machines, I installed Adobe CC on this newly built desktop.

Adobe Bridge and LightRoom run terribly slow on new desktop. I accidentally discovered why when I started up my laptop and my desktop Adobe apps stopped having slowness issues. Powered down the laptop, and desktop LightRoom threw an error message:

"Windows cannot access \\laptopname\users\j------o\pictures"

Went into desktop Registry and found a number of media settings were routed to my laptop with the "\\laptopname\" path! What the heck?! Also found that MS had set my Windows user name to be the same on both the desktop and laptop.

Despite changing all Registry settings from \\laptopname\ to C:\ and removing the laptop as a device, disconnecting from homegroup, and reinstalling Adobe CC on desktop, the mystery dependency is still present.

So I created a new MS user account, but my desktop won't let me log in with it, even though I set it up on account.live.com and in my Win 8 user accounts. My hope was to login with new acct and reinstall Adobe CC.

Next, I tried to reinstall Win 8 on my desktop SSD in hopes of creating a new acct, but the partition is "reserved" and untouchable. Can't find any solution on how to unreserve the partition.

 

[ronintexas]

I don't have Adobe CC - running CS6. There are default locations setup for the saving of data - interesting that Adobe actually puts in the locations as an UNK path - this may be due to their desire to eliminate piracy? (i.e. sharing the product on friends computers or reselling an account?) I am not accusing you of this - just pointing out a possibility.

Have you checked with Adobe support on this issue?

 

[Phillip Jones]

I first posted about the issue on the Adobe forum. No reply. The comical part was I thought it was my new graphics card and GeForce 344.11 driver because the slowness stopped when I removed the card, uninstalled 344.11 driver set, and connected monitor to onboard video port. While I was doing all of that, I had powered up my laptop to search for solutions. So of course, Bridge/LR ran fine. I correlated it to a graphics issue and filed an RMA w/ NewEgg. It was only later that evening that the slowness had returned and I got the LR error msg, all of which occurred after I powered down my laptop...that's when I realized the issue was laptop related, not graphics card/driver issue.

For now, I have fixed the issue by creating a completely new MS account, re-installing Win 8 (ignore my previous comment about sys reserve...major "doh" moment on my part), and re-installing Adobe CC.

All of this MS and Adobe "cloud connection/sharing/etc..." proved to be counterproductive for my scenario. Now, I can't share MS apps because I'm having to run 2 completely separate MS accounts.

I don't have Adobe CC - running CS6. There are default locations setup for the saving of data - interesting that Adobe actually puts in the locations as an UNK path - this may be due to their desire to eliminate piracy? (i.e. sharing the product on friends computers or reselling an account?) I am not accusing you of this - just pointing out a possibility.

Have you checked with Adobe support on this issue?

 

[ronintexas]

I am not a big fan of those "Cloud Applications"...I have stayed with CS6 because of it. Seeing the problems you are having - it really reinforces my thought process. It blows me away that they would force a single storage place for their software....there must be some way to change it.