Adobe Illustrator CS3 patch fails to update to 13.0.2

I could never find a quick solution to this problem and most methods did not work. Adobe’s solution is to completely remove all of CS3 and reinstall. When that fails, run their cleaner utility and install it again… Why not just fix it??? Adobe’s patcher’s will fail if any one file being updated does not match the md5sum. This means if you had what you thought was a patched Adobe install and just one file does not match the md5 check, the whole update fails. This even includes the Illustrator CS3 Read Me.html file. Their updates also need to be updated in sequence, 13.0.1 must be installed before 13.0.2. The updater will not check against any older check sums as an alternative possibility. This was the whole reason CS updater was failing for me, some of my files were still the originals of 13.0.0. When I added options that were not installed from my initial install, the installer somehow reverted some of the patched files back to the older version from the DVD. If you attempt to re-install 13.0.1, it fails telling you it has been updated already. The whole check to tell if your system is patched is a simple xml text file. It does not verify if the files were actually patched. It just reads the xml file, finds a reference to 13.0.1 and stops. No update needed.

This is how you check if you are having the same problem. Locate the patcher log file and open it in notepad or any text reader. The easiest way to get there is to bring up your Run dialog from the Start Menu and paste this %APPDATA%\Adobe\PatcherLogs This takes you directly to the application folder in your user profile. Open up Adobe Illustrator CS3 13.0.2.log and scroll down to the current date in the log file. If you have a large log file you can simple delete the file and run the patcher again. It will create a new text file with current dates. Look for the failed entry in the log file. Mine fails on the first file as seen below. This means the md5sum of Links Panel.aip is wrong, its expecting to find the md5sum from version 13.0.1. Mine is from version 13.0.0.

Install language of the product as set by patcher: en_US

Patching file: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Extensions\Links Panel.aip

Patcher successfully located the file to be patched at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Extensions\Links Panel.aip

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 8f43623eed759b34cc98cf632ec033c1

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: F71DF13E1158F1A2EFF92CD89BA4A475

checksum failed.

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 11579373299fb29fddf4dafff0d28384

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: F71DF13E1158F1A2EFF92CD89BA4A475

checksum failed.

Patcher was unable to verify the checksum before and checksum after of the file to be patched. Patch will fail.

File operation failed.

If you are getting basically the same error message then these steps will probably help you. Now the steps I am going to do are assuming most my files are reporting version 13.0.0. If most of yours are reporting 13.0.1 you will need to modify these steps towards extracting the files from the 13.0.1 patch instead of the install disk. Warning this may take a few minutes but should be shorter than completely stripping every reference of CS3 on your system and possibly messing up your serial activation. These steps will not touch any registry settings, license files or change anything not related to Adobe. How are we going to do this? Simple we are going to give the patcher what it wants and make it run like it should without modifying the patcher.

Things we need to have… 7Zip, Notepad or any text reader, Adobe Install Disk and Adobe patches.

7Zip is a free archive program. It is able to open and extract many different archive formats. This is not the only program that can do this but is fairly simple for what we need to do, plus its free. http://www.7-zip.org/

Notepad should be part of your OS install but if you are looking for something that does a lot more then try NotePad++ http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net

You can visit the Adobe website and download the manual patches for Illustrator 13.0.1 and 13.0.2. http://www.adobe.com/downloads/updates/

Now it’s time to get started. First find this file and delete or move it. {C4519961-AC64-4565-B3AF-9050296B5D5A}.patch This is the xml file that tells the patcher checks for what version is installed. If the file does not exist, the 13.0.1 patch will now tell you an update exists would you like to install it. It’s located in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Installers folder.

So now try installing 13.0.1 patch. You should now get the prompt about new updates and asking to install it. Try to install the update. If it completes without any error, then consider yourself lucky and finish up with installing the 13.0.2 patch. This means all your files were actually from the install disk and the xml file was just a leftover causing the problem. If you get a generic error message then we need to go back to patcher log file to find out what files are causing the error.

I am going to use my 13.0.1 patcher log file as an example.

Install language of the product as set by patcher: en_US

Patching file: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Photoshop Filters\Gaussian Blur.8bf

Patcher successfully located the file to be patched at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS3\Plug-ins\Photoshop Filters\Gaussian Blur.8bf

Checksum before of the file as specified in Manifest XML file: 82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784

Checksum of the file as computed from the target location: C45387A2E4777A5C88C097DFAAA1D705

checksum failed.

The patcher is looking the file Gaussian Blur.8bf, the md5sum it is expecting is 82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784 but what is detected on my PC is C45387A2E4777A5C88C097DFAAA1D705. If the files don’t match the patch fails.

We need to replace the current file on the PC with the one the patcher is looking for. This file is on your install DVD. It is located in a cab file Adobe CS3\payloads\AdobeIllustrator13en_US\AdobeIllustrator13en_US1.cab Your location may differ. Find this cab file and open it up with 7Zip. When opened you will see a bunch of files with md5sum values at the end of the file name. We need to make this a little easier to find the file we want. Sort them by file size and compare it the file size of the file on the PC. They will not be exact but should be close enough to find the file we need. For me the file is name is _111_82b0067317d3e1893f2fa3af8c63a784. Extract your file to the PC somewhere. Rename it to the actual file name on the PC. Backup your file on the PC and replace it with the file we just extracted and renamed. Make sure if you are backing up the original file to move it to another folder. If it’s left in the folder with a different name like .bak, Adobe will still try to load the file as a plug in. It will cause an error when starting Illustrator. Now that the file is replaced, run the patcher again. It will probably fail a few more times. For me, it took 5 files to get the patch applied. Just go back to the log file, go straight to the bottom of the log and find which file failed this time and replace it. After the 13.0.1 patch is completely installed, try installing the 13.0.2 patch. It should now pass no problems. If it still fails you can try the same steps to troubleshoot.

Hope that helps out…  — This is still in rough draft.  Will update it with some screen shots and clear up the wording.  Just wanted to get the idea out there for those looking for help on this problem.

Foxit Reader is a small free alternative program to open PDF files. It is much faster in starting and opening the PDF compared to the primary PDF reader from Adobe, Adobe Reader. One problem that I noticed with Foxit reader, it does not auto update the add-ons nor is there an update check for them. Recently while scrolling through a PDF, Foxit would crash repeatedly at the same page number. Adobe Reader would open the same page with no crash. First I just ignored the issue thinking it was a incompatible problem from not using Adobe reader or a corrupt PDF. It started becoming more frequent with other PDF files but still worked with most PDFs. I noticed the next readable page used a screen shot image embedded in the page before the crash. Way back when I first started using Foxit, certain PDF pages with images would not show up and required the free JPEG add-on. You must visit the Foxit web page and download it from their list of add-ons. The add-ons are updated from time to time to support the latest version of the Foxit Reader but they are not automatically updated after installing the latest version. To update the add-on, you must do this manually. So if you find your version of Foxit Reader crashing repeatedly check to see if any of their add-ons have been updated. In my case, the problem was the the JPEG2000/JBIG Decoder fxdecod1.dll. The crash occurred every time the PDF used embedded images but did not occur until one of those pages was reached.

The error was reported as:

FOXITR~1 caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module ntdll.dll at 001b:7c9109f9.

Solution: Close Foxit reader and update the add-on.

Get Foxit Reader

As much as I like some programs to be integrated, some items just don’t seem so helpful.   What there should be is a more simple way to disable these helpful items from the program that put them there.  Such a program is the Adobe Professional ver 7 and 8.   Here are the settings to stop the PDF Maker Office Addin.   The plugin or addin is stored in the registry.  It is just a simple change of a key value “LoadBehavior” from a 3 to a 0.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\PDFMOutlook.PDFMOutlook]
“LoadBehavior”=dword:00000003 to ”LoadBehavior”=dword:00000000
You will need to change the value on all the Office programs individually.  MS Word will be here and so on.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Word\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Access\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Excel\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\MS Project\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\PowerPoint\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Publisher\Addins\PDFMaker.OfficeAddin
Now if you have installed one of the Adobe suites that include Contribute, you will see the entry for this plugin also.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Office\Outlook\Addins\Adobe.Contribute.OfficePlugin
Follow the same steps in all the office keys to prevent it from loading in office also.