after getting fed up failing to legally upgrade from Adobe Trial CS3 to Adobe Design Premium CS3 (see my upgrade horror story). I found this free, extremely simple way to crack Dreamweaver CS3.

[update 1/30 - fixed the .bat file & found an activation crack that will work on Photoshop CS3 & other CS3 applications for win & mac - see comments for insturctions]

  1. download trial version from Adobe website (you have to register or go to bugmenot.com & try to find one there)
  2. When you launch the program for the first time it will ask you for a valid CS3 serial number. If you have one great, but I just ignore this and chose the 30 days option. (once it expires … keep on reading)
  3. [update 12/18] - i’ve created a batch file which does everything described below automatically for you – download it here – right click/”save as” & place it in (win only):
    “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\AMT\”     directory then:
    - create a shortcut to f-adobe.bat on your desktop / run it
    - when Dreamweaver starts first – quit it
    - when it starts again, just click OK … that’s it! :)

OR … u can follow my previous instructions below (i’ve also listed the contents of the bat file on the bottom):

  1. find application.sif file and … rename it -
    go to “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\AMT\” & rename “application.sif” to something like “-application.sif” (i’d recomend backing up application.sif before you do, just to be on the safe side)
  2. when you start Dreamweaver again, you’ll get “you cannot use this product at this time. you must repair the problem …” error mesage … click OK – & it will still START anyways! … dough :)
  3. go back to “C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Dreamweaver CS3\AMT\” rename the “-application.sif” back to “application.sif”
  4. start Dreamweaver, you’ll get expired prompt – click quit
  5. rename “application.sif” again (go back to step 1 above)

    unfortunately     you have to repeat the whole process every time you shot down the application … but it works!

ps: here’s the content of the batch file in case you wanted to create your own: 

ren application.bak *.sif
..\dreamweaver.exe
ren application.sif *.bak
..\dreamweaver.exe
cd amt
ren application.bak *.sif
exit