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September 29, 2015
Question

Flash 18 didn't uninstall completely

  • September 29, 2015
  • 4 replies
  • 792 views

Mozilla 41.0 was crashing a whole lot last 2 days, even with only 2 tabs open, closing the flash player helped very temporarily.  I checked & there was a flash update, so I updated but it didn't go smoothly.

At https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html, it shows the flash as updated.  Within Mozilla, https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/plugincheck/ shows that I need an update from Version 18. At about:addons, it shows both 18 & 19 running with both "always activate".  I manually de-activated 18 but when Firefox restarted it shows that both flash versions are still "always activate". 

Suggestions?

Thanks,

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4 replies

_maria_
Legend
September 29, 2015

Hi,

What OS version is this on?  What is the file name of the installer you used (we have several different installer files and this will identify the exact one you are using).


Was Firefox open when you upgraded from 18 to 19?

--

Maria

September 29, 2015

Thanks for the assist, Maria.

It's Win 7 x64.  I believe I tried it both ways (first with Firefox open and then with it closed) but am not 100% sure.

{I've since gone back & closed Firefox, started the installer, & let it reinstall.  I didn't get any "you already have this installed" message, seemed to install fine.  Didn't change any of the issues mentioned in original email.}

Here's what I used per my downloaded file: https://admdownload.adobe.com/bin/live/flashplayer19_ha_install.exe

_maria_
Legend
September 30, 2015

Hi tonib12,

Launch Firefox and go to about:plugins.  Look for the Flash Player version 18 entry.  What is the path to this file?  Go to this path and delete the file.  Restart Firefox.  Does it still detect the two versions?

You can perform a clean install:

  1. Download the uninstaller from Uninstall Flash Player | Windows - make note of the location the file was saved to
  2. Download the installer from get.adobe.com/flashplayer using Firefox - make note of the location the file was saved to
  3. Close ALL browsers and apps that may use Flash Player
  4. Run the uninstaller
  5. Go to C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash
    • Ensure the only file listed is FlashInstall.log file
    • If there are other files, such as FlashUtil or NPSWF manually delete them
  6. Go C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash
    • Ensure the only files listed are mms.cfg and FlashInstall.log
      • If you have certain other Adobe products installed (e.g. Flash Pro, Flash Builder) you may have other .cfg files listed
    • If there are other files listed, such as FlashUtil, NPSWF, etc, manually delete them
  7. Reboot the computer
  8. Run the installer
  9. When installation completes, launch Firefox and check the plugin installed
    • It should only detect version 19, if it continues to detect version 18, I suspect something is wrong with Firefox and it is not unloading the previous version.  In this case, I recommend going to the Firefox forums/support for assistance.

--

Maria