I've had a XPS420 for about 1 week now.(Vista)     It came preinstalled with OEM versions of Photoshop Elements 6, Soundbooth CS3 & Premiere Elements 4 as well as Adobe Reader 8.

The first time I opened Reader 8 to view a document, it started automatically downloading updates for every Adode program on my PC. Even though I had not even opened the other Adobe programs at that stage.  After the updates were installed, I tried opening Photoshop. It started to open the splash screen then stopped.

I tried CS3 & Premiere 4. One got to the "do you accept these conditions" page the other stopped again after the splash screen. Each time I try to open any of them, it gives me the circular 'thinking' icon & then nothing.  The Task Manager shows in "processes" that the exe files for the progs are running.

 

I uninstalled all the Adobe progs (after having to end the processes manually from the Task Manager).  I reinstalled Photoshop from Dell's supplied disc. I copied it to the Desktop and opened the setup.exe from there using the "run as administrator".  Everything appeared to install properly. Files all in the right places, desktop shortcut etc.  The "photo downloader' icon appeared in the taskbar(& it does launch), but when I click on the prog it again thinks about it and does nothing.  "Processes" again says it's running.

 

I uninstalled it and then downloaded a (trail) full version of Photoshop Elements 6 from Adobe.  It works great. (no special actions required to open it)

 

I tried swapping (just) the main 'Elements 6 exe' file from my OEM folder to the full versions folder.  When I clicked the setup.exe file it started to install but then came up with a dialog box that said "it could not install because of a wrong Licence".

 

I've spent the day searching both Dell's & Adobe's support pages for answers.  With all the Dells out there that come with the OEM Adobe Package preinstalled, I was sure I would come across a Post with the same problems.  But, alas no.

 

Can anyone please help?