Recently bought computer blocks IP addresses from Adobe

Question

To make it short:

I bought a computer and I suspect that the person using it was cracking licenses from Adobe, e.g. Photoshop or something, I've heard that in order to do that correctly you need to block some IP addresses from Adobe in order for the program to not realize that it's being used without a license. I now do want to use my bought Adobe programs, would any of you be kind and show direct me to the config/system file that includes/excludes specific IP addresses from Adobe? I'm on a Windows 10 machine (had a few partitions when I got it, so I suspect there might have been some dual-booting going on). Anything that might help me with this issue would be amazing, thank you very much!

PS: If there's a way to reset the entire system, I wouldn't mind that happening, it'd just be a bit more work for me afterwards.

Answer 1

Windows 10 64-bit.

Look at your hidden hosts file at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Comment the activate.abobe.com entries.

Change something that looks like:

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com to #127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com

Bing search adobe C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Sample hosts file:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.

#127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com