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A
Anonymous
November 18, 2014
Answered

need to detect version of Flash Player ActiveX installed in windows 8

  • November 18, 2014
  • 1 reply
  • 2070 views

My enterprise (for better or worse) uses add/remove programs to determine the version of flash players (activex and plugin) installed on a machine. With Microsoft taking over the ActiveX package for Win8.x, we've lost the "add/remove programs" (aka "programs and features") entry for flash player for IE. Now, our counts are inaccurate because I know that every Win8 client has flash player activex, but a) it's not being counted, and b) we don't know what version is on a machine.

We can look for the current Microsoft update KB number for flash player activex, but that changes every month, which requires engineering on our side and we don't have that bandwidth.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thx,

Adam

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer _maria_

Hi Adam,

You can use the registry entry to find the version installed.

ActiveX: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\FlashPlayerActiveX > Version

Plugin: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\FlashPlayerPlugin > Version

This is much better than the entry in add/remove programs.

--

Maria

1 reply

jeromiec83223024
jeromiec83223024
Inspiring
November 19, 2014

Not really.  As long as you ensure that your Win8 clients have the latest updates, you've ensured that they have the latest Flash Player.  Given that you're resource constrained and the problem space around keeping Flash Player updated has been simplified considerably in this environment, perhaps it's an opportunity to re-evaluate the policies that require you to do this kind of tracking on Windows 8 and higher.

A
Anonymous
November 19, 2014

It’s more or less a enterprise security requirement now to know exactly what we got everywhere. To add another thing into the mix – we don’t use windows update, so our machines are kept current by another patch management solution. Therefore my question about how to check version in registry (patch management solution’s preferred method).

_maria_
Community Manager
_maria_Community ManagerCorrect answer
Community Manager
November 19, 2014

Hi Adam,

You can use the registry entry to find the version installed.

ActiveX: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\FlashPlayerActiveX > Version

Plugin: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Macromedia\FlashPlayerPlugin > Version

This is much better than the entry in add/remove programs.

--

Maria

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