Adobe CS 3 Web Premium installation fiasco

My copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium arrived in the mail today! It contains the following major programs on a single DVD:

• Dreamweaver CS3
• Flash CS3 Professional
• Photoshop CS3 Extended
• Illustrator CS3
• Fireworks CS3
• Acrobat 8 Professional
• Contribute CS3

Needless to say, this image expresses how I felt when I opened the package:

However, after I finally got the installation process to complete almost *two hours* later, this image better expresses how I felt:

So I made the [apparently grave] mistake of installing Photoshop CS3 Public Beta when it first came out. After attempting to install my new suite, I got the following conflict:

No problem, just use the Add/Remove Programs tool to get rid of Photoshop CS3 Public Beta. Oddly enough, the uninstaller completed successfully, but didn’t do a single thing! I did a quick web search to see if anyone else had this problem and discovered this Adobe tech note titled, “Remove Photoshop CS3 public beta.” It instructed me to use a cleanup script that Adobe had created for just such a problem. It came with a not-so-comforting little disclaimer:

“WARNING: Before running the CS3Clean Script, it is critical that you back up your hard drive including all data, content, and applications. Failure to do so, and failure to follow the instructions included with the script, could result loss of the contents of your hard drive.”

Are you kidding me!? I have to backup my *entire* hard drive in order to go from an Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta to the real deal?? Did I just go back in time 10 years? And according to this Adobe forum post, the backed up data had to be on some media that was complete disconnected from the system!

…Well, to avoid the possibility of wanting to go postal on Adobe if I lost my data, I decided I would heed the advice, although I was not at all happy about it.

Once complete, I downloaded the Adobe cleanup script zip archive, but noticed it contained the following file:

I seriously thought there was a fair chance I was about to lose my entire hard drive by continuing with the process; but since I didn’t seem to have an alternative, I did it anyway.

I had to run the CS3Clean.exe script 3 times! The first time I discovered that I apparently didn’t have the “Windows Installer CleanUp Utility” installed on my system and had to download it here. After running the script the second time, it had an option to “preview” the changes that would occur without actually doing them–I thought this a wise idea so I went with it. Unfortunately, after the preview, the script shut down automatically and I had to start it back up from the beginning. It actually executed fully the third time, at “level 1″ (whatever that meant). Finally, the CS3 installation began successfully–or so I thought. When installation finally completed, I got the following error:

No Illustrator CS3? And no reason?? I still haven’t figured out why there is a problem with this and the last time I called Adobe I had an hour wait time. Grrr…

Oh, and another screwup: when I started Flash CS3 there was an “Upgrade Check.” It automatically correctly determined that I was upgrading from CS 2.3 Premium and asked for me to enter the serial #. I entered the serial number and it said it was invalid. Apparently, I had to enter the serial number on my CS2 Premium case labeled “Acrobat Pro.”

Seriously, this is the worst install experience I’ve ever had. Setting up my Linux distro was easier than this. I’m usually a fan of Adobe, but this was a big mistake of theirs in my eyes. Jumping through all these hoops and problems is lame, but more importantly, no one’s hard drive should ever be at risk because they want to install an Adobe product.