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bramweiser
bramweiser
Participating Frequently
June 25, 2016
Answered

Installation Problems for Flash Player -- WinXP

  • June 25, 2016
  • 1 reply
  • 2820 views

Hello,

I currently have Flash Player v21.0.0.242 installed in Firefox on my WinXP SP2 PC, but, though I can download v22, it won't launch in order for me to install it.

I saw an item (#8) here: Installation problems | Flash Player | Windows 7 and earlier, but, though it leads to a place at Microsoft Support to get a supposedly-needed file update for SHA-256 certificates, that is only for Windows Vista & Windows Server 2008, NOT Windows XP.

Also, another thread in this Forum deals with WinXP 64-bit versions, but mine is 32-bit.

Lastly, I'd heard about some recent software installers being configured in a way that WinXP can't read in order to launch them but I'm hoping that's not true here, or that there's a suitable workaround for that.

Can you please assist me with this?

Thanks so much,

Bram Weiser

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer _maria_

I can't speak as to why the update isn't eligible for your Vista system.  That would be a Microsoft question.

I don't see Adobe moving backwards to a less secure signing certificate as we're moving to sha256, which is the latest most secure signing technologies. Microsoft has also announced (a while back) they are dropping support for the old version, sha1.  You're going to see this more and more, not with just installers, but with websites as well (sites that use HTTPS instead of HTTP).  If a HTTPS website uses a certificate that is still sha1 Microsoft will show the broken lock when visiting that page, instead of the secure lock.

You can try opting into Background Updates to see if that works.  To do so, go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Flash Player > Updates tab > select 'Allow Adobe to Install Updates (recommended)'

1 reply

_maria_
_maria_
Legend
June 27, 2016

XP SP2 doesn't support sha256 certificates, which the online installer uses.  You can try using the offline installer posted at the bottom of the Installation problems | Flash Player | Windows 7 and earlier page in the 'Still having problems' but there is no guarantee that those will work.

bramweiser
bramweiserAuthor
Participating Frequently
June 27, 2016

Thanks, m_vargas.

Yes, I'd heard something about that before, but the link in that other place, which led me to a place at Microsoft's Support site and included a patch for Windows Vista SP2 & Server 2008 SP2 led me to think there MIGHT be a similar solution for XP SP2 as well.  Any insight into that, please?

Also, I think I did try downloading an offline installer before posting my original note here, but that it, too, wouldn't launch, perhaps for the same reason.

Is it necessary that this and future updates to Flash Player come with this kind of certificate which, for some of us at least, is unusable?  Doing so makes the update impossible to do, and leads to persistent notifications about Flash Player being out-of-date, sometimes (it seems) from the same pages for which we'd already said to "Allow and Remember" to use the version that's currently installed, instead of updating.

Any further thoughts/ideas, please?

Thanks again,

Bram Weiser

_maria_
_maria_Correct answer
Legend
June 27, 2016

I can't speak as to why the update isn't eligible for your Vista system.  That would be a Microsoft question.

I don't see Adobe moving backwards to a less secure signing certificate as we're moving to sha256, which is the latest most secure signing technologies. Microsoft has also announced (a while back) they are dropping support for the old version, sha1.  You're going to see this more and more, not with just installers, but with websites as well (sites that use HTTPS instead of HTTP).  If a HTTPS website uses a certificate that is still sha1 Microsoft will show the broken lock when visiting that page, instead of the secure lock.

You can try opting into Background Updates to see if that works.  To do so, go to Control Panel > All Control Panel Items > Flash Player > Updates tab > select 'Allow Adobe to Install Updates (recommended)'

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