Disable Adobe Flash Player in our environment (6000+ users)

[Indira Mourya]

Hello All,

We are planning to get the adobe flash player disabled in our environment.

We propose to get the below paths blocked by the windows defender.

1. C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash

              C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash

Please suggest what else can be done in order to block flash player in Windows 10.

[Test Screen Name · Accepted solution]

Have you considered actually uninstalling the Windows Flash components instead? Microsoft have a specific patch for this purpose. (Warning, it cannot be undone).

[_maria_]

I agree with OP, a better option to "disabling" Flash would be to uninstall it from your system

Adobe's uninstaller removes non-bundled version of Flash Player.  For the bundled version (e.g. Flash Player version bundled in IE/Edge by Microsoft) you would need to run Microsoft's update to remove Flash Player, which as OP mentioned is destructive.

Adobe's Flash Player uninstaller for Windows is posted at https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

The Flash Player Administrator's Guide has information on deploying the unisntaller silently across your network so it doesn't need to be done manually on each machine. The pertinent section is in Chapter 3.

For Microsoft's update to remove the bundled version of Flash Player, see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4577586/update-for-removal-of-adobe-flash-player.  Please read through this document carefully before doing anything.  This support page has a link to the Microsoft Update Catalog, which contains 43 different files for the different Windows versions and architecture.  Make sure you download the correct file for your Windows version and architecture.  If you experience issues with this update, please contact Microsoft as it’s their update, not Adobe’s.