Problems installing Adobe Illustrator CS3 on Windows XP Pro

I’ll try to stick with Japanese topics, but I thought I’d share this just in case it helps ‘the next feller’.

A few months ago I decided I wanted a quality video editing software. I was torn between Sony Vegas and Adobe Premiere.* I decided on Adobe because the $1200 suite would not only give me Premiere, but upgrade my CS1 Photoshop. It would also give me Illustrator, Flash and a few other programs that sound cool, but I would never use. The suite was actually CS2 but with a free upgrade to CS3 when it came out.

CS3 came out about a month ago but I finally received it yesterday. No problem - I know they had a backlog of orders to ship!

I ran the install and two hours later - bam! - everything was installed! Wait… Illustrator didn’t install. What? All other programs installed without a hitch. But for some reason Illustrator failed.

As you can see it gives loads of help.

Undaunted, (I decided not to daunt) I rebooted the computer and tried to install just Illustrator. Same thing.

Slightly daunted, I pulled the big guns - Google! Turns out many people have had trouble installing CS3. If you have problems, you are not alone. I tried all the suggestions: boot with minimal items loaded, changing the screen to VGA, uninstalling everything, reinstalling everything, etc.

In short, I stayed up past my bed time and woke up at 6:30 just to bang my head on the monitor.

As a desperate measure, I did the unthinkable. Yes, even though I am officially a ‘man’ I called to ask for directions.

I was on the phone for 71:09 minutes. At thirty minutes on hold, a nice tech named Allen said hello. Here is the procedure for anyone having trouble.

* If you have tried everything and something still will not install, put aside your manliness and call tech support.
* But first, if you don’t already have one get an FTP client so you can send them your error log. (They will tell you where the log is.)

Here is the reason for my error:
The System account does not have full access rights to the.svg and .svgz registry keys.

I don’t like it when I have to Telnet into my server. I don’t like it when I have to mess with my computer’s registry. I don’t like it when my hands get sweaty. But thankfully, it was easy.

Bottom line:
If you are running XP Pro, bought CS3 and it won’t load Illustrator, try this. (copied from there):

Give the System account full access rights to the .svg and .svgz registry keys.

Disclaimer: This procedure involves editing the Windows registry. Adobe doesn’t provide support for editing the registry, which contains critical system and application information. Make sure to back up the registry before editing it. For more information about the registry, see the Windows documentation or contact Microsoft.

1. Choose Start > Run.
2. Type regedit in the Open box, and then click OK to start the Windows Registry Editor.
3. Navigate to the following two registry keys:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.svg
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\.svgz
4. Right-click on each key and set the rights for the SYSTEM account to Full.
5. Close regedit and install Illustrator.

It worked for me. Of course fighting this ate up the last half of yesterday and the first half of today, but I hope this little post will somehow help the next guy (or gal).

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* Just on the off chance someone is wanting Vegas or Premiere and is nice enough to click through - Amazon link!