Adobe Creative Suite has a very misleading bug when installing onto 64 bit versions of windows. The details are described here, but manifest as a popup error on running any of the applications saying “User name, organization, or serial number is missing or invalid”. The error is nothing to do with the serial number, but actually about the install path. Beware, and check out the support article if you see the symptoms.
Archive for the troubleshooting tag
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Error “…user name, organization, or serial number is missing or invalid…” running Creative Suite
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TFS client not caching credentials
We recently had a problem on a couple of Vista machines where the TFS client would not cache the credentials used to connect. Typically you would get a challenge the first time you attempt to connect, and the credentials would then go into the standard windows credential store.
I’m not certain why the bevahiour changed, but the resolution was fairly simple. Go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Manage Your Network Passwords, then manually add in an entry for the remote machine, specifying the user account to use when authenticating. Any future TFS commands issued will pick up this entry and won’t challenge you to authenticate.
Our devbuild script issues a tf get command via an msbuild task, and this was failing as it was attempting to prompt the user to authenticate. After manually adding the entry as described, the devbuild runs as it should.
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Bad Apple
I succumbed to sexy looking hardware and bought a Shuffle a little while back for portable music. I’ll try to avoid too much detail in this rant, but I’m shocked and appalled by how bad their Windows software is.
The actual hardware device is very well designed, extremely simple and useable. It charges from usb, so doesn’t require battery changes, and seems to be very good value.
However, the integration with iTunes on Windows is extremely buggy. I’ve had problems all along getting the device to be detected (although it shows up as a removable drive in windows with no problems). The latest version of the software and another doomed attempt to get it working resulted in the device being detected, but reported as corrupted.
The integrated firmware update / device restore then failed to provide any feedback on activity, and sat there for a couple of hours. I tried this a few times, then finally got into a state where it would not even attempt to restore the device, as it couldn’t determine the appropriate firmware.
I finally found a workable solution. Completely bypass iTunes, manually copy music onto the drive, then run a python script to rebuild the database file. I had assumed the device was dead, and was about to chuck it in the bin before finding this download. I’m now really happy using the device.
I’m totally at a loss about why Apple’s software is inferior to a python script written by a frustrated or bored user. I generally quite like supporting the underdog, but this time the dog is bad and sloppy and needs a kick.
