Updating OS question

Hey everyone,

My wife has a MacBook Pro from 2011. It's running fairly slow and has a bunch of programs and such that our college installed on it way back in the day. I'd like to pretty much do a factory reset on it, but she's got a lot of programs installed that she doesn't want to lose, like Photoshop, Illustrator, Aftereffects, etc. Is there a way to back up these programs ONLY, reset to factory, update the drivers and OS to the newest stuff, and then reinstall the programs?

Thanks!

Welcome to the forum.

Your question raises some issues the administrators here may ask about. The applications you listed (Photoshop, Illustrator, Aftereffects, etc) all require registration. Does your wife actually have licenses for that software, or are the applications left over from the college? If they technically belong to the college, then the issue is that YOU and your wife don't have a license for them.

On the other hand, if you do have a legitimate license for them, the answer is that the way to transfer those applications is to de-authorize them through Adobe and any other developer that may be in the "etc" part, then do the reset to factory, update the OS as you want and reinstall, re-authorize them through Adobe, etc., on the new installation. Those Adobe products, etc, don't transfer well because of the security features and need re-registration. Adobe will have her registration of the products on file and should allow the reinstallation if they are properly de-registered first.

They are all registered to her. So, basicaly, I have to hunt down the keys for everything?

You may be able to contact Adobe and they can find the information for you, but you (your wife?) will need to provide the information from the purchase of the software.

Perfect advice from Jake & Bob.

- Nick

ferrarr said:

You may be able to contact Adobe and they can find the information for you, but you (your wife?) will need to provide the information from the purchase of the software.

Click to expand...

If Adobe is anything like Microsoft (and I have been told they're worse), the answer you'll get back from them is "tough luck". If you lose the keys to Adobe or Microsoft programs, their answer to is you will need to repurchase the software.

@arb098: Yes, you will definitely need to hunt down those keys because as Jake pointed out reinstalling them will probably require re-registration or activation.

Actually Adobe is pretty easy to deal with. In fact, if she has an account at Adobe from when the software was registered, she can get the registration information through the website. I just tried with my CS4 registration and all the registration data is there under my account details.