Guide to Manually updating Flash Player for Windows
I have seen quite a few people struggling with updating flash player, and decided to make a guide for all the Windows users on how to manually update flash player without any fuss.
First I am going to talk about the 3 different types of Flash Players available to download so every one has a grasp of the differences,
There are 3 type of flash player plugins, and they all have to be installed separately, You will have to re-install per browser plugin type. It is important to note that you can have different versions here as well because not all browsers and applications use the same plugin remember this.
i) NPAPI - this is for Firefox most notably ( Safari for Windows )
ii) ActiveX - Internet Explorer/EDGE(windows10)
iii) PPAPI - Opera browser
Google Chrome:
You will notice I did not list anything for Google Chrome. That is because Google Chrome already has a version of Flash build into it so that update is handled 100% by Google Chrome. You will NOT need or do anything from this site in regards to upgrading or updating Flash player for Google Chrome. The only real troubleshooting besides re-installing would be to delete the following file as it has been know to cause errors ( if you get them ) while playing flash content:
c:\users\%username%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\PepperFlash
The manual process is very simple and is only two steps
1) Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller helps out a great deal when re-installing Flash Player Versions, running that prior to updating helps out a great deal. It will Uninstall ALL Flash players EXCEPT ActiveX on Windows 8 to 10! You can grab the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller here
2) Close all browsers Install the latest offline installers for each of the browser types are listed below ( install only the ones you need ).
You can locate the alternate installers in the Windows installation help pages under the "Still having problems?" section at the bottom of the page.
Some notes regarding Windows 8 and upward to Windows 10:
Starting in Windows 8 the Adobe Flash player ( ActiveX aka ) is integrated into the Operating system, and there are NO TOOLS ON THIS SITE THAT WILL UNINSTALL OR INSTALL THEM! That would be for the EDGE Browser as well as Internet Explorer. You will have to grab all your updates through Windows updates; Yes You/We are at the mercy of waiting for Microsoft to spin out up update for the Operating system. Their Integration in EDGE does not appear to be as smooth as Google Chrome's implementation of flash player, and I believe that it is turned off ( a mistake IMO; they might have changed that ).
Troubleshooting:
IF you need to preform a clean uninstall based off you operating system, or you need to do this for multiple machine I have a clean uninstaller. To get that, click on my name in these forums, in my profile ( might have to click 'View more details' ) there is a ' link you can browse to. This link is towards the bottom of the page. This will remove some additional Operating system files based off your Operating system and some misc cache files. Windows 8.X and Windows 10 will only remove the cache files not the Operating system files. The clean install process is usually for Windows XP through 7, however I simplified it down to a one click BAT file for all Windows Operating systems.
I Have a Automated process that preforms the manual install of Adobe Flash player there as well that is GUI based and has some advanced features to use if applicable. This actually preforms a clean install of Flash based off of your operating system, and handles all the hard work. It can be found in the link i mentioned for the uninstaller. It knows what to delete and more importantly what NOT to delete, and takes less than a minute to run for the most part. The file has been white-listed by Symantec as well. This is based off and modified from the following official Adobe article for clean install of flash player and have simplified the process down and made proven changes to it.
There have been some known old registry entries from older flash player versions that can cause conflict with newer installations on machines that have not been imaged in years or flash has not been properly uninstalled and there are residual files, etc left over, that will not be covered here as that is an advanced topic.
Use 64 bit browsers if possible:
Most browsers with maybe the exception of Chrome are 32 bit by default download. Here is an article on 64 bit chrome.
Firefox 64 bit versions can be found here: Mozilla Firefox Web Browser — Download Firefox in your language — Mozilla . They by default are 32bit downloads unless you dig literally for the 64 bit version which I have provided. Firefox users will notice the biggest benefit of not seeing that 'unresponsive script error'. That is 99% gone in the 64 bit version. I use the 64 bit version, and have been using it for about 6 months or more and only seen it once. IF you NEED Microsoft Silverlight, it is recommended to use Firefox as it does support it, where Chrome does NOT support Silverlight.
Update all other drivers:
You may wonder why I say this, but if for example you update your graphics driver, but not some of the drivers related to your motherboard your system might not communicate efficiently with its vital components as it could. I use DriverBooster free it is bloat and malware free ( Download Driver Booster - MajorGeeks ) . Just don't install its companion offer there is clearly a checkbox not to. This thing finds outdated drivers of all sorts. It might download the components a little slower in the free version, but it never expires. Its really Great. Your call though.
I hope this helps out some people having issues
Best regards
AdChoices