[BobC]

This is for information and is no longer a live problem but might help someone.

A month or so ago I was having problems with the HDD on my pc so i "cloned" the drive onto a SSD and replaced the HDD with the SSD. Effectively everything was just the same only faster.

Then a week or so later a book I had reserved on Borrowbox became available and I downloaded it. As usual I received an .acsm file which ADE tried to open but this time failed with an authorisation error.

I tried to erase the authorisation in ADE so that I could re-authorise it but it wouldn't let me.

I then removed ADE from the computer and re-installed it. It was, however showing identical authorisation credentials as before.

In order to get a copy of ADE that I could authorise afresh I had to remove ADE, edit the registry to delete all the "Adobe" references (not to be undertaken lightly) then re-install ADE.

This fixed it. It appears that the ADE authorisation key, which being held in the registry is not removed when the program is removed, contains a UUID that refers to the computer hardware and changing the HDD for a SSD had resulted in a UUID change for the PC.

If only ADE would have allowed me to erase the authorisation using the menu and my Adobe password (which I knew) there would not have been a problem, however Adobe's attempt at technical support is a chatbot that drives you round in circles and doesn't help.

I hope this helps someone in the future.

BobC