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Adobe Creative Cloud Error 108: "Another Installer Instance Is Running" (macOS)

Overview

Installing an Adobe app (Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, Photoshop, etc.) through the Creative Cloud desktop app fails with:

There was a problem installing Media Encoder. Another installer instance is running. Wait for it to finish and try again. (Error Code: 108)

Clicking Retry keeps failing. Almost always this is not a real second install in progress — it is a stale Adobe installer process left over from an earlier attempt that never exited and is still holding the install lock. Until that zombie process is killed, every new install throws 108.

Symptoms

  • Any CC app install fails immediately with Error Code: 108.
  • Retry re-fails without ever making progress.
  • No visible second installer/progress window is open.
  • Frequently follows an install that was cancelled, crashed, or was interrupted (sleep, force-quit, reboot) hours or days earlier.

Root Cause

Adobe's install stack serializes installs behind a single lock, coordinated by these root-owned helper processes:

  • …/Adobe Desktop Common/HDBox/Setup --pipeName=… — the install engine
  • /Library/PrivilegedHelperTools/com.adobe.acc.installer.v2 — the privileged installer helper
  • …/HDBox/AdobeCrashReporter.framework/…/Adobe Crash Handler — watchdog for the above

If a prior install is interrupted, the Setup engine can be left running indefinitely. It still holds the lock, so the Creative Cloud app refuses to start a new install and reports 108. The giveaway: the offending Setup process has a start time hours or days in the past, not from the current session.

Diagnosis

List the running Adobe installer/CC processes and check their start times:

ps aux | grep -iE 'HDBox/Setup|acc.installer.v2|Adobe Crash Handler|Creative Cloud' | grep -iv grep

Look for a HDBox/Setup --pipeName=… (and its com.adobe.acc.installer.v2) whose start time is older than the current install attempt — e.g. a Setup from two days ago while the retry only spawned processes seconds ago. That old Setup is the stuck instance holding the lock.

Note the PIDs (second column). These processes run as root, so clearing them needs sudo.

Fix

1. Click Cancel on the Error 108 dialog — do not Retry; the lock is still held.

2. Kill the stale installer processes. Target by PID from the diagnosis step: 

sudo kill -9 <setup-pid> <installer-v2-pid> <crash-handler-pid>
Or, PID-agnostic — kill any stuck Setup/installer regardless of PID: 
sudo pkill -9 -f 'HDBox/Setup'
sudo pkill -9 -f 'acc.installer.v2'

3. Relaunch Creative Cloud and retry the install. The lock is gone and the install proceeds.

If 108 persists

The on-disk lock/state itself is stale. Quit Creative Cloud fully, then remove the HDBox and ElevationManager state (Adobe regenerates both on next launch): 

sudo rm -rf "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Desktop Common/HDBox" \
            "/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Adobe Desktop Common/ElevationManager"
Relaunch Creative Cloud and retry. Try the process kill first — it resolves this in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Prevention

  • Let Adobe installs run to completion; avoid force-quitting Creative Cloud or letting the Mac sleep mid-install.
  • After a cancelled/crashed install, do a quick ps aux | grep HDBox/Setup before starting the next one — kill any leftover engine proactively.

Verification (2026-07-05, MajorAir)

Media Encoder install failed with Error 108. ps aux showed a HDBox/Setup + com.adobe.acc.installer.v2 pair started two days prior (25 Jun) still running, alongside fresh Setup processes from the current attempt. Killing the stale June 25 PIDs cleared the lock; the install completed on the next retry.

Tags

macos adobe creative-cloud media-encoder error-108 installer hdbox stale-process diagnostic

See Also