Flash Player not working

[aarcher28]

I was talking to a tech from HP the other day about my printer not installing. They told me to do a few things, and ever since I did them I cannot view flash player items (Youtube, for example). I have no idea what the command did that the tech told me to do, but it must have messsed something up badly, cause everything was fine the day before. I updated to the lastest flash player and was watching Youtube just fine. Now I keep getting a message saying I have to update Flash Player, which I already did the day before and have been since Friday. But I still get the same error. The commands I was told to run are as follows:

Run>msiexec /unregister

Run>msiexec /regserver

They also told me to run some AccessDenied utility of theirs, and I have NO clue what it did. I tried to talk to a tech about the problem, but they only seemed to care that I got my printer installed. So I thought I would ask here for some help. I did try to run that SubInACL from Microsoft, but it didn't help either. I am using IE6, though as I said everything was fine before the HP tech told me to run the above commands and the utility. I am running Windows XP with service pack 2. If I can find out what that utility did, I will post it here. Any help is appreciated.

Update: Apparently the AccessDenied Utility clears registry keys. Not sure which ones. The guy I got didn't seem to speak English very good.

[bnfoat]

I have just solved my issue with Flash Player not playing videos on the msn.com and abc.com websites and the solution may or may not help you.  Here is the solution that worked for me from MSN Customer support.  Apparently when Flash Player is uninstalled, not all files and folders are deleted.  I had to manually delete these files and folders.

Black Screen, Flash does not load, or Player works on other sites but not MSN Video

If Adobe's Flash player fails to load at all --but only when going to http://videos.msn.com you may need to delete a file used by the Flash Player because that file may be corrupted.  Adobe's Flash stores various configuration settings for each web site and for each user.  If one of those data files has become corrupted, the Flash player will just hang while trying to load.  These files are not deleted when you uninstall flash, so even if you uninstalled and reinstalled flash, you may need to perform the following steps.

To fix this problem on a PC running XP, Delete the files at:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER NAME\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player

To fix this problem on a PC running Vista Delete the files at:

C:\Users\ YOUR USER NAME \AppData\Roaming\Macromedia\Flash Player

After you have deleted the files, restart Internet Explorer and browse back to http://videos.msn.com, When you return to the video site, the Flash player will recreate the deleted files above with default files.  This should resolve the issue. Please note: If on your PC the issue remains, an updated version of MSN Video is scheduled to be released that will solve the problem in late June, 2008.

We understand that you may not be familiar with Adobe Flash, additional support is available here:

http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/

[pwillener]

• Download the Flash Player uninstall utility from http://www.adobe.com/go/tn_14157
• Close all browser windows, then run the above uninstaller
• Reinstall Flash Player from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/

[bnfoat]

Pat, it is not quite that simple.  There are files in the Documents and Settings folder that are not removed by running the Adobe uninstaller.  Even with IE closed and a reboot there are still files in "Documents and Settings\Your name\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player" folder that in my case were corrupt.  I had to manually delete them.  I've attached an image of this folder, but don't know if it will make it into the forum.  Bruce

[pwillener]

Attachments are currently not working in this forum; use the camera icon to include an image in a forum post.

The easiest way of clearing Flash Player data is by using CCleaner (tab Applications, Multimedia, check 'Adobe Flash Player'). Of course if data files are corrupt, they may not be easily removed.

Anyway, thank you for the detailed info.