Did you read your way through this:

http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b6ebbd

You can refer Microsoft.com

You may receive this error message if any one of the following conditions is true:

* The folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to is encrypted.
* The drive that contains the folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to is accessed as a substitute drive.
* The SYSTEM account does not have Full Control permissions on the folder that you are trying to install the Windows Installer package to. You notice the error message because the Windows Installer service uses the SYSTEM account to install software.

If you click on the link above they offer a few solutions.

Has anyone else had this problem? How did you resolve it?

I am experienceing the same thing you went through, bought CS4 today at foothill college library anxious to install it...so far it has been a nightmare with that error 1604

I am having the same problem. I'm using Vista and trying to install Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator CS4 and I get the same error on all of them...1603. I had Photoshop CS3 awhile back but I upgraded it to the trial version of CS4. I recently purchased CS4, so I uninstalled the CS3 product.

I have tried everything...my temp folder has been cleared, I have full access on the SYSTEM account, I created a new windows account to install from, I have used both the CS3 and CS4 installer clean-up utilities from Adobe...I have restarted my system in the diagnostic startup mode (from the msconfig window, with all non-microsoft services disabled), I have done a full scan with the disk check utility, and I have defragmented my drive. I have installed and uninstalled and did a number of combination of these things, all without luck. I have manually went into the registry and searched for all Adobe CS4 entries and I have deleted them (of course I backed it up first, though). Windows and all of my drivers are completely up to date. I have plenty of space on my drive to install to. I even copied everything to the hard drive and installed from there. No luck, with anything! Still the same annoying error of 1603! It always fails with Bridge CS4 and the actual program that I am trying to run (be it Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign). Every other component installs correctly though.

I have searched all over Google, Microsoft, and Adobe for some sort of different answer, other than the normal temp folder is full, SYSTEM account, blah blah blah. I can't seem to find any other answer!

I did laugh at something on Adobe's website though...it explained the 1603 answer and what to do about it. At the end of the list of things to do, it said you can install the programs on a different machine. Hm. Wow. Good thing I spent hundreds of dollars on these programs, only to have Adobe claim that their program sucks and we should just try it on a different machine because they can't offer us any real support.

Anybody have any solution? Advice? Anything?

What about this link:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/view...nalId=kb403911

It basically puts the blame on Google Desktop and tells you what to do to overcome Error 1603.

Yeah, that was my first result on Google. I don't have Google Desktop and I uninstalled all of my Google products prior to this installation. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Another thought. Adobe uses InstallShield. I recently had a problem with the Update Manager portion of InstallShield. I discovered that under Vista for this particular piece of software (Systran - not Adobe), the Update Manager (ISUSPM.EXE) had to be run as Administrator.

So, outside chance here - have you tried running the install executable as Administrator? I've no idea whether or not spawned executables inherit the Administrator elevated privilege but that may be something we can go into later.

Let us know.

I actually turned off the UAC while I installed it, just to make sure everything didn't require an administrator access. I am downloading and installing Windows Installer 4.5, which I guess wasn't automatically installed using the Windows Update. I'm going to restart and clean everything again, and I'll see if this helps at all.

I'm sure this is an Installshield problem although one can't rule out the propagation of an error, say in the Windows Installer package (if it's used by Adobe).

My Systran problem got sorted out very quickly by using the problem form on the Installshield web site. Maybe that's the next route to take after your further tries.