I just figured it’d be a good idea to create a quick blog post about how to find and download older versions of Adobe software. I got inspired by Robin Hilliard asking for a Solaris installer for ColdFusion 8 the other day on the cfaussie mailing list. He got lucky and Richard Turner-Jones from Adobe AU managed to get him an installer from an internal Adobe server, but what could average Joe do?
For a start – don’t use third-party download sites. You wouldn’t know the source of the file, if it has been tinkered with etc. BTW: I’m assuming you either have a valid license key (and your installation media is lost/broken or you lost the previously downloaded installer file) or you’re after a trial version of the particular software. This is not an introduction to cracking Adobe software – just letting you know in advance.
For a start you’ll find a very, very good and comprehensive collection of direct download links on Technolux.Their blog post is written with the intent to explain people how to download Adobe trials without having to use the dreadful (it really is dreadful) Akamai Download Manager. But as the blog post contains a massive list of direct links of (even old) installers on the Adobe servers, it’s very useful to have. Their list goes back to the days of CS3 and Acrobat 8, I’ve also seen ColdFusion 7 and 9 on there.
Another good source is prodesigntools.com. They provide their own tag ‘ddl’ to list a series of blog posts providing direct download links to Adobe products. In some case you might find a link that’s missing on Technolux on their site and vice-versa.
Specifically for Adobe ColdFusion, Charlie Arehart’s blog is a good resource. He recently wrote a post listing some installer locations when Adobe released ColdFusion 9.0.2 that might be of help if you’re looking for a specific Adobe CF installer.
Again – all this is not an instruction to crack or hack Adobe software. The links provided by the sites I’ve listed are publicly available on Adobe’s servers – to access some you need to log in with an Adobe ID, some others don’t even require that – and provided you (older) trial versions of Adobe software. If you want to run them longer than the specified trial period, you will have to provide a valid serial number.
Hey, many thanks for the mention! Much appreciated 🙂
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