Known Participant

Question

Black Screens after upgrading to Flash 18.0.0.203

Forum|Forum|11 years ago
July 10, 2015
8 replies
5077 views

We have a digital signage product that uses the ActiveX flash control. After upgrading a few of our systems to Adobe Flash 18.0.0.203, we are experiencing black screens when flash should be playing. When our application starts, the first SWFwill play correctly, but all subsequent SWFs only display a black screen. No errors are being generated.

This is a critical issue for us and I assume many others using the same technology. I would be glad to provide any other information or code snippets if necessary.

18.0.0.203 black screen

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Atlantic Bruce

Participating Frequently

We are still seeing problems when using Flash Player Versions 20.0.0.270 Both versions 20.0.0.228 and 20.0.0.235 also appear to exhibit this problem.

Last good version of Flash Player is 19.0.0.245.

At the time where users were experiencing black screens we were able to see an error message:

“error HRESULT E_FAIL has been returned from a call to a COM component”

Is anyone else experiencing problems?

chris.campbell

Legend

We're hoping to get a beta out tomorrow that we believe will fix this problem. Could you try again after we push out the bits (eta sometime late morning/early afternoon California time)? The update will be found here: Download Adobe Flash Player 20 Beta for Desktops - Adobe Labs

A

Atlantic Bruce

Participating Frequently

It will be a pleasure to help - thanks :-)

J

jdw9113Author

Known Participant

Chris - is there an official release date yet? We've been able to remove the problematic version from our Windows 7 systems. Also on Windows 8.1 systems by removing the associated windows update, but as we're testing our product with Windows 10, we currently see no way to revert back to a specific flash version for the ActiveX control. Please let us know as soon as you know something. Thanks.

chris.campbell

Legend

We're shooting for patch Tuesday, 8/11. Our updates usually start around 3am PST and this will be a silent auto update release. Systems that have enrolled in the "Allow Adobe to install updates" will get the update within 24 hours.

brenth48155965

Participant

Did this patch get released.

brenth48155965

Participant

When can we expect to see it officially released?

brenth48155965

Participant

I am having the exact same problem with a Windows app that uses FusionCharts. Has this been resolved?

S

stevenr84458382

Participating Frequently

It's been 11 days and no solution yet, but I would put my money on Adobe that they're working hard to produce the update which resolves it. It's inconceivable that any company producing development tools would ever summarily pull the rug out from developers on functionality with zero notice and leave them hanging in the breeze. Word gets around fast and that would definitely be damaging to the brand in a very competitive marketplace. They're a solid company and stand by their products and I would expect a fixed update will be available in hours/days.

J

jdw9113Author

Known Participant

We've upgraded to the new version released today (18.0.0.209) and it did not solve the issue. The same behavior occurs as described earlier - in both our main application and the test application I submitted. Still a critical issue for us. Thanks.

chris.campbell

Legend

jdw9113 - Just sent you email, I'm sorry that this is still an issue.

S

stevenr84458382

Participating Frequently

We've tried the 209 also yet still same issue.

Ours is a desktop app (so there's no browser involved) which uses the ActiveX Flash Player for displaying SWF files which has worked terrific for 8 years or so (through various version upgrades) yet fails badly with 203, 205 beta and 209 (black video area).

Prior to this, it's worked without issue on XP, Vista, Win7, Win8, Win10 Pre-release and 32 & 64 OS's...

Now, with 203 and up, when our application starts, the first SWF will play correctly, but all subsequent SWFs only display a black video area.

Rolling back to 18.0.0.194 resolves it but that's not an option for our clients.

One more piece for the puzzle might be that we do use Action Script in our SWFs. I mention that because we did put together a tiny sample app in case that would help you reproduce the issue. During the course of that process we found that some SWFs without Action Script didn't seem to have the black screen issue yet other SWFs with Action Script did. We are not conclusive about our findings and are only reporting observations here. We did note that once we played a SWF w/Action Script then black area was forever shown instead of any new video chosen (Action Script or not).

We can submit a tiny sample app if that helps as we're most eager to see a resolution.

djklaugh

Participant

I am having this problem also - Windows 8.1 and latest version of Firefox. Firefox says I have an old version of Flash Player but I do not! I have the 18.0.0.203 version. And yet each time I come to Adobe I get the download screen. Firefox will not allow the extension for this to be activated. Very frustrated with this. Firefox has not been responsive.

S

stevenr84458382

Participating Frequently

John,

We're having the same issue. Have you found a resolution or more intel on the nature of the issue?

J

jdw9113Author

Known Participant

We have not. We are currently working with our clients to rollback to version 18.0.0.194 - which is fairly straightforward on Win 7 but not so easy on Win 8.1. We'll have to figure that out next. I haven't heard from Chris today but hope to hear something soon.

chris.campbell

Legend

We plan to push a fix out for this issue tomorrow (7/14). Systems that have enrolled in auto updates (the default choice) will get the new build within 24 hours of release. For anyone that would like to verify that this fix addresses their problem, please email me (ccampbel@adobe.com) with your OS and browser choice. Please note that ActiveX test builds will be for Win 7 and below.

We apologize again for the inconvenience that this has caused you all.

chris.campbell

Legend

Hello,

I'm sorry you've run into this issue with our latest release. Could you send me (ccampbel@adobe.com) the system/browser information, reproducible steps and a link to your application so we can test this out internally?

Thanks,

Chris

J

jdw9113Author

Known Participant

Thanks Chris. I have sent you the information via email. Please let me know if you received it, John.

chris.campbell

Legend

Got it, just replied.

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