Skip to main content
A
Anonymous
March 23, 2010
Answered

Ghost in the machine (Flash Player 9)

  • March 23, 2010
  • 1 reply
  • 864 views

I have a strange problem on my Windows 7 machine that I can't seem to resolve. There is a version of Flash Player 9 r124 that exists on my computer that I cannot remove. While this might not normally be a problem, the real issue is that any time I open a .swf, it defaults to this version of Flash, even though I have Flash Player 10 installed. If I try to tell windows to open it using Flash Player 10, but it acts as i it is the same application and makes no difference. If I want to run the .swf in 10, I have to open 10 manually and open the .swf from there. I have no way of tracing where the Flash Player 9 client actually is, (I've looked in windows/System32/macromed as well as windows/WOW64/macromed and it is not there).

I have tried using the flash uninstaller from adobe, which does fine for removing Flash Player 10 but for some reason does nothing to remove this rogue copy of 9. Short of going through every entry of "Flash" in the registry or reformatting, I was hoping someone would have something to suggest.

tldr: I can't uninstall Flash Player 9, I have tried almost everything I can think of/google search, please help.

Thanks.

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer pwillener

    I don't know how you got FP9 on your system, unless it came with some application that installed it.

    If I were in your situation I would try something like Process Exporer; monitor what is running, and from where, when you run something with that default FP9.

    1 reply

    pwillener
    pwillenerCorrect answer
    Legend
    March 24, 2010

    I don't know how you got FP9 on your system, unless it came with some application that installed it.

    If I were in your situation I would try something like Process Exporer; monitor what is running, and from where, when you run something with that default FP9.

    A
    Anonymous
    March 24, 2010

    Wow, that little application did it. I imagine that will come in handy in the future. I don't know why I didn't think of using a better process tracker.

    Turns out, Flex Builder 3 had a local version of FP9 in its program files. Hopefully I can replace them with FP10 or FP9 in the future, in case I need to use Flex again, but as for now I removed them and everything started working like magic.

    If anyone is curious, the directory I found FP9 in was:

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\Player\win\FlashPlayer.exe

    Thanks for the help! You just saved me and several of my coworkers a heap of annoyance.

    pwillener
    pwillener
    Legend
    March 24, 2010

    Thanks for the feedback; it's good to know where that "ghost" came from.

    Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
    Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices