I need to uninstall Adobe® Flash® Player Installer/Uninstaller 14.0 r0

[Baby_Brat]

I need to uninstall Adobe® Flash® Player Installer/Uninstaller 14.0 r0 but have looked everywhere for how to do this & can not find out how to do this can someone please help? I am using A Sony Vaio, Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit, I use Chrome Version 36.0.1985.143 m.

I want to get it off of my system because ever since I installed it I have had problems with Chrome loading it does not want to load then if I restart my comptuter & I click on chrome  5 windows open up at one time a white box appears saying "Your profile can not be used because it is from a newer browser version of google chrome. Some features may be available. Please specify a different profile directory  or use a different version of chrome" then if you click ok it shuts all the windows down. I have figured a way to get one window to stay open so I can use chrome, now I do have other browser I can use but I do not like them  at all & do not have a flash player since mine is built in with Chrome. So on to the other problem that began as soon as I downloaded this & I understand it may not be this but I still want to get it off of my computer. I also have been having trouble with my flash player error messages: saying it has stopped working constantly, it says upgrade flash text, a plug in shock wave flash isn't responding then in (stop plug in) it wants you to hit.  I have run 3 different Mallware programs through my computer just in case that was one question that was going to be ask. No other programs jave been downloaded wither.

I am not very good with computers so I have to come to places like this for help & I really have to have help explaining what to do because  do not know much about computers other then getting on them & surfing the web & some basic things. When chromes message said specify a different profile directory that went right over m head. So that should give you an idea where I am coming from. I want to thank you in advance & hope I have made sense in what I have written I tried to give all the information that I could.

[The_Warrant]

Ummmm.... Maria? On my computer the process starts even without a browser being open and stays running. When I close it it restarts within a few seconds. It's often a drag on resources. Previous versions of Flash Player didn't behave this way. If I close a process it's because I want it closed. As I said in my post I thought the Installer/Uninstaller was an integral part of the current Flash Player program now, unfortunately, so you agree with me. In other words, it can't be uninstalled or disabled without affecting the player itself. Bad program design. Here's the deal Maria, we want Flash Player, but just not the new self starting, long running, resource dragging Installer/Uninstaller addition to it. Also, I'm still waiting for a "STAFF" member to tell me how to drag a running program to the recycle bin as instructed by STAFF mbr Jeromie Clark. Aren't "STAFF" members supposed to be experienced with computers and software? Just wondering because I'm an Electronics Engineer and military IS specialist, and built my first computer in the 1980's. I'm on my 10th generation computer now. I AM confused about something you said. "This will remove Flash Player from the system.  After Flash Player has been removed from the system, you can delete the Flash Player Uninstaller from the system..." I thought they were integrated. If they can be removed separately, well that's what we're trying to do! Also, as to terminating the process before uninstalling, when I end the process it restarts within a few seconds, even with no browser or anything else open. Why can't we remove the Installer/Uninstaller separately if you say we can delete it separately, or did you mean we can delete the program FILE after uninstalling it? I sincerely hope this will change in the future, and we will have more control over what runs on our computers instead of the take it or leave it bundles that connect to the Internet without our knowledge or approval first. It's a security vulnerability.

[jeromiec83223024]

Your screenshot of task manager clarifies things.

When I replied, I had been looking at the screenshot of the desktop from the original poster, which shows the uninstaller executable and it's properties.  That executable doesn't install anything -- it can just be dragged to the trash; however, that didn't completely align with the behaviors either of you were describing, and we've been trying to figure out what you were talking about.  It wasn't making a lot of sense to me, and it's not a question that I've seen come up before, at least not articulated this way.

FlashUtil32_XX_XX_XX_XX.exe is the sandbox broker for Internet Explorer.  You can read more about the sandbox work here: Flash Player Security with Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10

The description listed in Task Manager is a bug, and the source of the confusion.  We've been doing a lot of work modernizing our build systems, and this is fallout from that work. This is something I'd like to see cleaned up, but it's pretty low on the list of priorities.

The broker service is invoked when Internet Explorer is running in Protected Mode.  On my Windows 7 machine running IE 10, running Flash content in Internet Explorer with Protected Mode enabled causes the broker service to be invoked (this is probably true for previous versions as well, but I didn't test them).  If I disable Protected Mode and restart Internet Explorer, the broker is not invoked, which is expected.

To disable Protected Mode, launch Internet Explorer and choose security.  Uncheck Enable Protected Mode.  Internet Explorer will restart, and you should be able to verify that the broker is no longer invoked when loading content with Flash Player.

I've included a screenshot showing the expected processes in both scenarios below.  As the Flash Player ActiveX control is loaded into an Internet Explorer process, you'll see the child explorer.exe process listed, which hosts the Flash ActiveX control in the process list.

Sandboxing the Flash Player plug-in is an important security mitigation intended to increase the cost of successfully developing and deploying malware.  While it's not a panacea, it significantly raises the bar for attackers.  As I'm sure you've read in the news and trade literature, the threat landscape has evolved significantly over the last few years, and modern security threats and their mitigations are a necessary reality.  New mitigations typically come with some additional processing overhead.  The overhead varies based on the architectural choices made by the particular browser vendors, but the overhead in IE is pretty reasonable.

We haven't published a blog post specific to IE, but if you're interested in the implementation details, the sandbox architecture is similar to what we did with Protected Mode for Firefox on Windows.  The Flash Player process that handles untrusted content runs at Low Integrity, which restricts access to critical system resources in the event that you encounter malware designed to take control of the Flash Player process.  Access to system resources is negotiated through a Medium Integrity broker process.  Without Protected Mode, the Flash Player process handling untrusted content runs at Medium Integrity, making it easier for malware to escalate privileges from a hijacked process.  Depending on the functionality in play, a lot of message-passing can take place between IE, the broker and Flash Player.  We've effectively doubled the number of messages that get passed, plus put a bunch of validation checks in, and all of that consumes CPU.  It also makes your web browsing activity more secure.

Some desktop applications (Yahoo Messenger, for example) also use the ActiveX version of Flash Player installed on your machine.  This could explain why you see Flash Player and the broker invoked unexpectedly.  We're also aware of an issue on Vista where the broker doesn't always exit as expected.  In that instance (and on WinXP), I'd highly recommend that people use Google Chrome for web browsing, as Google has extended some security mitigations that would only be available to Internet Explorer users running in newer versions of Windows, and it doesn't suffer from this specific issue with the broker.