I'm surprised to hear about CS3, but you have to remember PM6 is about a decade old - AFAIK it doesn't even run on Vista. In fact I'm working with a client to move them from PM6 to InDesign (and Unicode fonts), since they realize the tightrope they're walking on is getting thinner by the week... The tricky thing with them is that the Armenian hyphenation plug-in has to be re-written.

hhp

I suppose your best option is to install a virtual machine running XP (or downgrading the system entirely). Then preparing a transition, as suggested by Hrant.

There's an option in Windows 7 for setting the "compatibility mode" of an (older) application so as to help it run better under the new OS. Select the app icon (or a shortcut, even), right-click, get "properties," go to the "compatibility" tab and look at your options. You could for example try setting compatibility to "Windows XP"....

No promises that this will help, but it's the one other thing to try (besides a virtual machine) before giving up.

Cheers,

T

@ijgolf

Thomas is on to something, I hope. (I'm a Microsoft Certified Network Engineer and former 3rd level desktop support guy.)

1) Try installing under the Administrator account. Even if your user account has Administrator privileges, I've seen problems. Makes no sense but such is Windows.

2) Uninstall CS3. And then, find the msi or, more probably the exe intallation file, right click it, and select Properties -> Compatibility Tab -> Run this program in compatibility mode for... and select Vista or XP or whatever.

This way, the whole installation gets done in backwards compatibility mode.

Once that's done, try it. If still no luck, add Thomas's step to the process and run the program executable in compatibility mode, too.

rich

I hadn't thought of running the *installer* in compatibility mode. Nice tip!

T

I installed Photoshop CS3 a week or two ago. Took about four tries trick seemed to be to closing all apps including IE (as the installer advised).

Closing all apps as sii suggests seems like a mighty fine idea.
*Especially* any and all anti-virus and security software.

@thomas

>nice tip
My wife had an app required by her school that just refused to install in Vista. The company flat-out said it wasn't Vista compatible and no update was on the way - not enough of a market, I suppose. Her entire class was going nuts over this. Everybody had Vista.
Installing in compatibility mode was a Hail Mary Pass, but Windows actually reached back and used older dll's and such and the sucker actually installed. Spent hours at it.
Amazed me, I thought I'd seen it all. I wrote up directions and it worked on all the student's Vista machines so no fluke.

rich