Adobe CS3 gives you this pleasant and fatal alert if you try to install it on a case-sensitive Mac filesystem:

procedure

1. Get a firewire hard drive the same size (or larger) as your boot drive. I do a full weekly backup so I already had such a drive.

2. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner 3 Beta.

3. Start Carbon Copy Cloner and make a fully copy of your boot drive to your backup. Make sure you choose both “copy everything from source to target” and “erase the target volume”. This will give you a bootable backup.

4. Restart and hold down the Option key. Choose your backup drive and press enter.

5. Start the Disk Utility application and erase your regular boot drive. Make sure the volume format is set to “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”.

6. Start Carbon Copy Cloner again. Make a full copy of your backup drive to your regular boot drive. This time, don’t choose “erase the target volume”, or it will reformat it to be case-sensitive all over again.

7. Now we need to patch up some things. Start a terminal and run:

cd "/Volumes/Your Boot Drive/"
sudo cp -R /usr .
sudo cp -R /private .
sudo cp -R /sbin .
sudo ln -s private/tmp tmp
sudo ln -s private/var var
sudo bless --folder . --bootinfo --bootefi

8. Reboot. Hold down Option again, but this time choose the regular boot drive.

9. Download Applejack. Install it.

10. Reboot and hold down Command-S. At the single-user prompt, type:

applejack auto restart

Let everything finish. Now you’re clear.