Flash not working on 32 bit XP

Report · Mar 25, 2017

Looking at Twitter it appears that Flash is not working. I get this media cannot be displayed. I have installed the latest Flash. I use Firefox 52.0.1. This does not work on "Opera" either. So I tried it on my Linux machine. All was well. Then I reinstalled Chrome knowing that they don't do upgrades to XP. Things worked well on Chrome. It "seems" like perhaps 32 bit XP Flash isn't working or something.

Ideas?

Thanks

Report · Mar 27, 2017

Please provide the following information:

Direct link to content exhibiting the behaviour
Version of Opera in use
Using both Firefox AND Opera, go to https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html and click the Check Now button
- Post screenshots (2) of the resulting system information

Report · Mar 27, 2017

Sky News crew nearly hit by roadside bomb in Iraq | On Air Videos | Fox News + a personal set of "follows" on Twitter - virtually ANY video.

Opera version

36.0.2130.65

Firefox reports v 25x but Opera reports v 21x. I clicked the upgrade button and an installation failure occurred 3 times. Is 64 bit or Win 7 required? I "have" Opera but do not use it. Chrome works fine. HUH?

Report · Mar 27, 2017

Our installers are only going to work (at least without throwing a signature failure) on WinXP SP3, because previous versions lacked support for SHA-256, which is required for signing software on Windows at this point.

There are actually a lot of Flash Players. It looks like a single product, but we have to target the browser's plug-in interface, and the operating system (at least at major inflection points, like Windows 8+). Firefox uses the NPAPI variant of Flash Player, Internet Explorer uses the ActiveX variant, and Chrome uses the PPAPI version that's built in as a component to Chrome.

Opera is interesting, in that modern versions are probably using the PPAPI variant of Flash Player, which would be a separate download and install. Either Opera's internals are confused, or you need to download an updated copy of the appropriate Flash Player. You should just be able to launch Opera, and go here: http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. We look at the User-Agent string that your browser sends with the request, and serve up the appropriate download.

If installing the prescribed Flash Player download doesn't resolve the old version in Opera, the quickest solution might be to just do a quick uninstall/reinstall of Opera.. but I can probably come up with something more surgical if you get to that point.

Thanks!

Report · Mar 27, 2017

Unfortunately, I am using the latest version of Opera that is 32 bit. At this point I simply don't understand the why's of the latest Flash for 32 bit XP not solving the Firefox problem. Incidentally FF on Linux works fine. Weird.

Report · Mar 27, 2017

Just to let you know. . . I totally shut down Firefox, opened Opera, went to the suggested link, downloaded Flash, shut down Opera, restarted Opera, and still it doesn't work. As I said, Chrome does work. To me there is something about the 32 bit version of Flash.

Thank you

Report · Mar 28, 2017

In opera, if you type about:plugins in the address bar, and then click More Details, can you copy and paste (or post a screenshot) of the information there?

Report · Mar 28, 2017

Opera 36 uses the PPAPI plugin. Firefox uses the NPAPI plugin. These two are not interchangable. Google embeds Flash Player PPAPI in Chrome, and the embedded version is only used by Chrome. Also, Chrome 49, the last version of Chrome for XP/Vista will not use the non-embedded PAPPI plugin.

In addition to the screenshot requested by Jeromie, please post the screenshot of the Flash Player Help System Information from Opera browser. You posted a screenshot from Firefox browser, but not Opera browser.

Report · Mar 28, 2017

Report · Mar 28, 2017

I looked at the video that you posted on a WinXP box, and what I see in the Firefox developer tools is a large number of erroneous SSL certificate failures.

In the case of Flash Player, if we hit a certificate failure, we don't connect, and we don't provide a warning that you can bypass. The connection just fails.

On an actively maintained operating system, those SSL connections validate correctly, indicating that WinXP lacks either the root certificates or cryptography support to properly validate modern SSL certificates. I didn't dig into why those certificates were failing, but it was a wide swath of different domains, indicating that something fundamental is wrong.

Given that Twitter is HTTPS by default, as are all of the libraries and non-video content served by Fox News, it's looking a lot like WinXP is unable to validate the SSL certificate on a connection for something fundamental, like the video playlist file that tells us where those video assets are.

The truth of the matter is that it's long past time for WinXP to go away, and we're even seeing widespread migration in China, where WinXP was widely used. While we don't actively block installation on WinXP, content providers have certainly moved on. WinXP still represents ~8% of global adoption, but it's now aggressively trending downward after being a fairly stable, double-digit population for years.

So your intuition is right -- something is up with Flash Player on WinXP, but it's primarily where we're running into lack of modern, maintained cryptography support at the OS level. Moving to Win7 (or Linux) as a minimum OS is really the best course of action at this point for XP-era hardware.

We're definitely not making significant engineering investments in WinXP at this point, and in fact, aren't allowed to even have an XP machine in our facilities, much less attached to the network. Furthermore, Chrome has already dropped WinXP support, and Firefox has already relegated XP to the Extended Support Release. Support for XP on Firefox will expire completely in September. In that context, work we do for XP is effectively wasted, and those finite resources could be applied to platforms that have large populations of users and years or decades of ongoing support left.

Report · Mar 28, 2017

Opinion: I will switch from WinXP if you buy 🙂 I'm on social insecurity ! I don't even think you can buy Win7 anymore and most people where I worked as a computer systems analyst always wanted XP due to all of the junk Microsoft was pulling like changing from .doc to .docx (Office 2007)) whereby our company was asked to shell out $500+ per seat. Time for Linux 🙂

I know I know, the life cycle of software in the U.S. is 5 years. I will send what I can IF I can make Opera cooperate What about FF though?

Report · Mar 28, 2017

Chrome has it's own SSL stack built in, which is why I think you're seeing things work right there.

The commentary above was about Firefox. Opera was interesting because you had mismatched Flash versions, but I don't think that either of them (or IE) will get you around the cryptography issues. Lots of people like Mint Linux these days. Alternatively, a Win10 laptop will really only run you about $400 (and if you just want a browser, a decent Chromebook is $250). The hardware costs have come way down compared to a comparable machine 5-10 years ago.

All joking aside, if you're doing anything confidential (banking, healthcare, etc.) XP is trivial to defeat from a security perspective. Chrome really provided the best defenses for WinXP over the last couple years by implementing their own versions of common OS facilities, and doing a lot of process isolation work, but now that they're out of the game, none of the options are good.

Oh, and I saw your screenshot come through, it looks like we're running the right version if we're sending out the correct version info. That indicates that something is wonky with Opera -- the manifest where it stores the version is stale, can't be written to because the file is corrupt, etc. I don't know Opera's internals well enough to tell you which file to delete, but my guess is that a reinstall would get it done.

Report · Mar 28, 2017

I'll drop this. I personally don't like Opera. Google has always marched to the beat of a different drummer re: Chrome as far as I am concerned. I wish 32 bit Firefox would work with Flash but I don't think that is going tol happen.

I have a very old and slow laptop (1.6G processor) running Linux Mint XFCE. I never fails. I "may" just make the jump to Linux on the big computer. It is 64 bir ready but only has two memory slots on the mother board. (Weird). I have some software I really like but am not sure I can get them working through Wine. I hate this.

I wonder how long it will be until Win7 is dropped 🙂 At any rate I would like to thank you for an intelligent conversation. I'm just too old to write my own stuff anymore but I do love Linux.

$400 might as well be $400,000 to me. BTW, you'd love my firewall 🙂

Thanks again,

Steve

Report · Mar 29, 2017

Windows OS support is available at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet

Report · Mar 28, 2017

By the way, thank you for the insight. It is not uncommon for people to tell you to reboot or buy a new computer. Anyway, your reply was great !

Report · Mar 31, 2017

Install Windows 10 / Fedora GNU/Linux