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K5namy
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February 8, 2021
Answered

After uninstalling Adobe Flash Player via Windows update(4577586), it seems flash still works.

  • February 8, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 832 views

I just removed Adobe Flash Player via Windows update(457786) and checked whether it is really uninstalled by confirming that C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash file is gone. Also I double-checked the status of Adobe Flash Player via Adobe website(https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html) using Internet Explorer and it says the computer does not have Flash.

 

However, I downloaded a file using Flash and it seems still work. I can see it is working by Macromedia Flash Player. As far as I know, Macromedia and Adobe are interchangeable terms.

 

In short, why does Adobe Flash Player still works after I deleted it. 

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer jeromiec83223024

    There are several variants of Flash Player.  The one you removed was the ActiveX Flash Player plug-in for IE and Edge, which was distributed by Microsoft as part of Windows 8 and higher (and required a Windows Update to remove). 

     

    On the browser plug-in front, there are also Flash Player plug-in variants that target NPAPI (Netscape Plug-In API for Firefox and other Netscape decendants) and PPAPI (Pepper API - for Chromium and Chromium-based browsers).  Google Chrome also included their own copy of Flash Player, which will be removed by upgrading to Chrome 88 or higher.

     

    To remove the Adobe-distributed Flash Player plug-ins, you can run our uninstaller: 

     

    Uninstall Flash Player - Windows:
    https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

     

    There are also some other types of Flash Player -- the Standalone player, which is what it says on the tin -- a stand alone copy of Flash that runs SWF files outside the borwser, executables generated by Flash Authoring -- this is an old-school thing, but allowed developers to bundle their Flash content with a copy of the standalone player to produce an executable that just ran.  There's the debugger, which is intended for Flash developers to debug their content in a browser, and the standalone debugger, there are some Adobe-internal variants for building Flash-based UI in older Creative Suite content, and there's the possibility that a given application (either with or without a license that actually permits it) bundled it's own copy of Flash Player in it's own directories as part of that application installation.  We frown on that because we can't keep it updated -- it's some weird copy that we don't know about, and it's stuck at whatever version the developer used when they built the application.  There are like 30-something variants when you multiply it out over all of the possible supported operating systems, browser and use-cases. 

     

    Without speaking about specifically what application you're talking about and the specific version of Windows we're talking about, I can't really give you a good answer.

    1 reply

    jeromiec83223024
    Community Manager
    jeromiec83223024Community ManagerCorrect answer
    Community Manager
    February 9, 2021

    There are several variants of Flash Player.  The one you removed was the ActiveX Flash Player plug-in for IE and Edge, which was distributed by Microsoft as part of Windows 8 and higher (and required a Windows Update to remove). 

     

    On the browser plug-in front, there are also Flash Player plug-in variants that target NPAPI (Netscape Plug-In API for Firefox and other Netscape decendants) and PPAPI (Pepper API - for Chromium and Chromium-based browsers).  Google Chrome also included their own copy of Flash Player, which will be removed by upgrading to Chrome 88 or higher.

     

    To remove the Adobe-distributed Flash Player plug-ins, you can run our uninstaller: 

     

    Uninstall Flash Player - Windows:
    https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

     

    There are also some other types of Flash Player -- the Standalone player, which is what it says on the tin -- a stand alone copy of Flash that runs SWF files outside the borwser, executables generated by Flash Authoring -- this is an old-school thing, but allowed developers to bundle their Flash content with a copy of the standalone player to produce an executable that just ran.  There's the debugger, which is intended for Flash developers to debug their content in a browser, and the standalone debugger, there are some Adobe-internal variants for building Flash-based UI in older Creative Suite content, and there's the possibility that a given application (either with or without a license that actually permits it) bundled it's own copy of Flash Player in it's own directories as part of that application installation.  We frown on that because we can't keep it updated -- it's some weird copy that we don't know about, and it's stuck at whatever version the developer used when they built the application.  There are like 30-something variants when you multiply it out over all of the possible supported operating systems, browser and use-cases. 

     

    Without speaking about specifically what application you're talking about and the specific version of Windows we're talking about, I can't really give you a good answer.

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