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sugarcane52
sugarcane52
Participating Frequently
November 23, 2015
Answered

My Flash Player stops working and I have to download several it times a day. What is wrong?

  • November 23, 2015
  • 3 replies
  • 442 views

My Flash Player stops working and I have to re-download several it times a day. What is wrong?

I have checked to see if it is turned on and it always is. I have cleared the temp files. When I try to download it, I always get a message that I don't have enough privileges to complete the download. Then when I check, it is working again just fine!

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer jeromiec83223024

    If you're in a corporate environment where you do not have administrative rights on the machine, you should have a conversation with your friendly IT person; however, I'm guessing that's no the case.

    If it's your home machine and you're an administrator, it's a good indication that the filesystem is corrupt.  It's not really great news, sorry.

    First things first, if you have anything important on the machine, now is an excellent time to back it up somewhere.  Removable disk, web storage, whatever.  When the filesystem starts getting wonky, it could just be a poorly timed power outage or something, or it could be an early indication that your hard disk is going to bite the dust soon.  Having lost my fair share of drives, I'd recommend taking the warning as a gift and make a backup.  It's way less painful than the alternative.

    Once your valuables are secured, and your seat is in the locked and upright position, scan for and fix anything wrong with the filesystem.

    Check your hard disk for errors - Windows 7:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2641432

    At that point, take the nuclear option and manually purge every bit of Flash Player from the system. 


    (Note: These instructions are for Win7 and below.  If you're on Win8 or higher, let's talk more before you do anything.)

    Performing a Clean install of Flash Player on Windows:

    https://forums.adobe.com/thread/928315

    My guess is that you're going to arrive at a step that you can't complete because you lack permissions to do it, although you *do* have permission.

    If it's deleting a file, usually a utility like Unlocker will fix it for you, at which point you can delete the file and complete the removal process.  That was probably the damaged file.  If you couldn't clean it up as admin, our installers weren't able to touch it either.

    Unlocker - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com

    If it's a registry key, you have larger problems.  There are commercial third-party utilities that purport to make magic registry fixes, but Windows includes it's own registry checker and repair tool that's already not fixing the issue.  I'll leave it up to you to experiment with those if you want, or whether you just want to do a complete reinstall of the OS and applications.  Either way, something is wrong with the underlying OS.  Personally, I tend to be skeptical of the aftermarket utilities, and if it's been a few years, you'll probably be surprised at how fast the machine is after doing a fresh OS installation.

    Hope that helps.

    3 replies

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024Correct answer
    Inspiring
    December 16, 2015

    If you're in a corporate environment where you do not have administrative rights on the machine, you should have a conversation with your friendly IT person; however, I'm guessing that's no the case.

    If it's your home machine and you're an administrator, it's a good indication that the filesystem is corrupt.  It's not really great news, sorry.

    First things first, if you have anything important on the machine, now is an excellent time to back it up somewhere.  Removable disk, web storage, whatever.  When the filesystem starts getting wonky, it could just be a poorly timed power outage or something, or it could be an early indication that your hard disk is going to bite the dust soon.  Having lost my fair share of drives, I'd recommend taking the warning as a gift and make a backup.  It's way less painful than the alternative.

    Once your valuables are secured, and your seat is in the locked and upright position, scan for and fix anything wrong with the filesystem.

    Check your hard disk for errors - Windows 7:

    https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2641432

    At that point, take the nuclear option and manually purge every bit of Flash Player from the system. 


    (Note: These instructions are for Win7 and below.  If you're on Win8 or higher, let's talk more before you do anything.)

    Performing a Clean install of Flash Player on Windows:

    https://forums.adobe.com/thread/928315

    My guess is that you're going to arrive at a step that you can't complete because you lack permissions to do it, although you *do* have permission.

    If it's deleting a file, usually a utility like Unlocker will fix it for you, at which point you can delete the file and complete the removal process.  That was probably the damaged file.  If you couldn't clean it up as admin, our installers weren't able to touch it either.

    Unlocker - Free download and software reviews - CNET Download.com

    If it's a registry key, you have larger problems.  There are commercial third-party utilities that purport to make magic registry fixes, but Windows includes it's own registry checker and repair tool that's already not fixing the issue.  I'll leave it up to you to experiment with those if you want, or whether you just want to do a complete reinstall of the OS and applications.  Either way, something is wrong with the underlying OS.  Personally, I tend to be skeptical of the aftermarket utilities, and if it's been a few years, you'll probably be surprised at how fast the machine is after doing a fresh OS installation.

    Hope that helps.

    sugarcane52
    sugarcane52Author
    Participating Frequently
    December 16, 2015

    Thanks for the summary and additional info! I hope others may find it helpful, too.

    I am not in a corporate environment. It is a desktop PC.

    What do think of Linux(sp?) ?

    What do you think of Ubuntu?

    Are these better to resist viruses? (I had Boob Face)

    jeromiec83223024
    jeromiec83223024
    Inspiring
    December 16, 2015

    I think it depends on your interest in fiddling around with the computer vs. just having things work.  If you want to tinker with the guts of your operating system, Linux is cool.  As far as security goes, I don't put a lot of stock in the open-source vs. closed-source arguments -- that a religious argument and neither approach is perfect.

    Windows, like Flash, is interesting to attackers because of it's ubiquity.  That doesn't make other products and technologies more secure, it simply makes them less scrutinized.

    Using a current version of Windows (like Win10) and keeping it updated with automatic patches is going to bring the full suite of modern defenses to bear.  Both the IE/Edge and Chrome teams take different approaches to security, but both are really pushing the edge of modern defenses in various ways and more importantly, they're both getting in the same room to collaborate with us to make those defenses get applied to Flash as well, since we're present across all the browsers.  Technologies aside, getting current and staying current is really your best line of defense, maybe back-stopped with a reputable antivirus product, just to catch things in the cracks where auto-update fails or doesn't happen quickly enough.

    Personally, I don't have a lot of faith in utilities to clean up virus infections.  They can clean up what they know about, but if the older infection serves simply to establish a foothold with which to update the virus to something current (yeah, malware has auto-update too), then there's a risk that the infection you *don't* know about still persists.  Most people don't have the time or expertise necessary to conduct a conclusive forensic analysis after an incident.  Once you know the machine is infected, how do you definitively prove the negative?  You can trust the tool, but there's a whole industry around automatically mutating malware to avoid detection.  If it's a machine or a network that I need to trust with my health or financial data, etc, that's a tough sell.

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