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grittyminder
Participating Frequently
April 11, 2012
Question

Possible to uninstall Flash Player for specific browser with Uninstaller program?

  • April 11, 2012
  • 1 reply
  • 953 views

Greetings,

I'm using a domain login script to deploy Flash Player across 400 or so PCs. Currently the script is set up to run the Flash Player Uninstaller executable prior to running the IE Flash Player Installer executable. The problem with this is that the Uninstaller seems to uninstall Flash Player versions regardless of browser type, whereas the installer is always for a particular browser.

Specifically, in our environment our supported browser is IE, but we allow users to run other browsers such as Firefox and Chrome (but they must apply security updates themselves). When we deploy a new login script to install the latest version of Flash Player, the typical user will be unaffected because they use only IE. However, users running Firefox will suddenly be unable to use flash after the Flash Player installer script is run.

So is it possible to use the Flash Player Uninstaller program to uninstall Flash Player for only a specific browser? Alternatively, will Flash Player uninstall cleanly (and the keyword is _cleanly_) if the installer is run without using the Uninstaller program?

Thank you in advance for your reply.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

pwillener
pwillener
Legend
April 11, 2012

You may get a more official reply from Adobe here.

To the best of my knowledge your observation is correct: the uninstaller tool will always uninstall all installed versions (ActiveX 32-bit, ActiveX 64-bit, plugin 32-bit, plugin 64-bit).

From my experience, the uninstaller from Control Panel will uninstall cleanly - as long as no browser is running during the uninstall.  With cleanly I mean that no files are left behind; I have no knowledge if there are registry entries left behind (with the uninstaller tool, or with the Control Panel uninstaller).

For your specific problem: why don't you always install both the ActiveX and plugin for all users? The plugin is just a single dll that is added to the install folder (two, respectively, on 64-bit systems).

G
grittyminderAuthor
Participating Frequently
April 13, 2012

Thank you very much for your insightful reply.

> For your specific problem: why don't you always install both the ActiveX and plugin for all users?

> The plugin is just a single dll that is added to the install folder (two, respectively, on 64-bit systems).

I guess the reason is that if we were to install the plugin then we would have to test the plugin, troubleshoot if the plugin doesn't install correctly, etc. Basically we would have to support it, which is something we are not very excited about doing.

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