May 18th, 2007
Well, after wasting a whole lot of time following the automated advice from Sony, I Googled the error message and found a solution on the Microsoft Web site. It involved making changes to the registry (which, as we are always advised, is as dangerous as playing with a neutron bomb). But they worked. The optical drive is back and working fine.
So I immediately tried to install my brand new copy of Adobe’s CS3. Error! Error! Does not compute. I got the “2739” message! No steps were recommended on how to solve it.
I’m fortunate to have a few contacts at Adobe, and was eventually referred to an Adobe “TechNote” (http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=kb401521) which in this case challenged me to change the registry via the old MS-DOS interface (when will this finally disappear from the Microsoft’s various OSs?). The instructions were a trifle arcane, but I summoned all of my old skills, and soon succeeded. CS3 will soon take over the remaining space on my hard drive. Success! (?!?!??)