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J
jakobal
Participant
January 29, 2020
Question

Flash not installing on Mac

  • January 29, 2020
  • 2 replies
  • 466 views

A couple of weeks ago I tried updating my Flash player, but forgot about the installation and closed my Macbook. The next time I opened it, the installer was stuck at 95%. I tried closing the install manager, but it wont let me. The tab stays open, and I cant even restart my Mac, because it wont get shut down. Tried draining the battery completely and hoping it would just disappear, but no luck. So now the installment tab seems forever stuck at 95%, wont finish, and i am unable to both restart and turn off my Mac. Support chat wouldnt help of course, so Im trying my luck here. Any suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated!

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2 replies

T
Test Screen Name
Legend
January 29, 2020

As an aside... if the Mac can't be shut down, press and hold the power button for 10-20 seconds. This forces a switch off. It's generally a very bad idea, but I have had to resort to it sometimes, despite the possibility of damaging things. Better than trying to drain the battery anyway - and modern Macs make it very hard to get the battery drained...

jeromiec83223024
jeromiec83223024
Inspiring
March 3, 2020

The thing here is that our installer wouldn't just deadlock the machine on its own.  There's a confounding factor.  If I had to guess, it's probably a nasty disk access failure.  Either the disk is corrupt, or it's failing, or both.  The machine gets stuck, pegs the CPU at 100%.  If you can kill the installer, the parent process causing the disk access will die and you'll get control of the CPU back temporarily, but the underlying problem is still there, and you'll hit it again when you try to write to the same spot on the disk. 

 

If the disk is failing, giving it a workout might be the thing that pushes it over the edge, so I always recommend backing everything critical up first.  Disk recovery services can run into the thousands of dollars, and a cheap backup disk (even in the 1-2 Tb range) are < $100.  Time Machine is your friend.

 

Anyway, once you know that your important data isn't going to spontaneously evaporate, running a disk repair utility is probably going to turn up some interesting failures.

 

See the "Try Disk Utility" section:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT203176

 

While you're there, choose Repair Filesystem Permissions (Verify will frequently return clean, but then Repair will still fix a bunch of problems).

 

If the repair is successful, you're probably good to go.  Run another disk check in a week or two.  If it comes back dirty again, think about proactively replacing the disk.

_maria_
Community Manager
_maria_Community Manager
Community Manager
January 29, 2020

You should be able to kill the installer window in Activity Monitor:

Applications > Utilties > Activity Monitor.app

 

You may need to select to view all Processes

 

Activity Monitor menu > View > All Processes

J
jakobalAuthor
Participant
January 29, 2020

Was able to close it now, but in the process of downloading Flash player a second time, it stopped on 95% again... Any tips or ideas?

_maria_
Community Manager
_maria_Community Manager
Community Manager
January 29, 2020

We'll need to review the installation log files to troubleshoot why it's stopping at 95%.

 

Please review the FAQ https://community.adobe.com/t5/flash-player/where-do-i-find-the-flash-player-installation-log-on-the-macintosh/td-p/4056836?page=1 and configure your system to capture the pertinent log files and run the installer again.  When it hangs, exit/close out of the installer.  

 

If you're using the online installer, all 4 files (installer.log, FlashPlayerInstallManager.log, Adobe_ADM.log and Adobe_GDE.log) are required.

If you're using the full/offline installer, only installer.log & FlashPlayerInstallManager.log are required.

 

When finished, upload the files to cloud.acrobat.com (see https://community.adobe.com/t5/flash-player/how-to-share-a-file-using-adobe-document-cloud/td-p/4787523?page=1) or some other file sharing service of your choice that doesn't require account log on to access.  Post the link to the uploaded files in your reply.

 

Thank you. 

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