Installing previous version of flash player

Report · Dec 17, 2013

Up front:

I know - I know - I am in the wrong group/forum.

But

a) when posting earlier I got something of a not authorized error

b) when searching for a flash player forum, most were greyed out

c) my endless searches for a forum admin regretfully remained in vain

As my last restort I am posting here...

I have resp. want...:

1. uninstalled Flash Player as outlined on http://forums.adobe.com/message/4041846

(How do I do a clean install of Flash Player?)

2. IE11 x64 and Firefox on my Windows 7 x64

3. downloaded/extracted fp_10.3.183.20_archive.zip and found below files suitable for installation

flashplayer10_3r183_20_win_sa.exe

flashplayer10_3r183_20_win.exe

flashplayer10_3r183_20_winax.exe

4. installed flashplayer10_3r183_20_win.exe, but for IE this was not suitable

5. installed flashplayer10_3r183_20_winax.exe but IE still asked for Flash Player to be installed

For some reason (long story) I need an old version suitable for FF and IE to be installed.

Q: how am I to proceed ??

i.e. what files no I need for these two browsers?

Thanks

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Report · Dec 17, 2013

You can find older versions here: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html

But...

1. The "You need the latest version" message comes from HTML in the pages you visit and it WON'T go away until you're running a version that checksums as the minimum set in the code.

2. IE11 has its own world of problems, which are solely Microsoft's responsibility. There are thousands of pages and hundreds of sites that don't recognize the browser and thus, will not recognize the plugins in the browser.

Running Firefox 26 with the Flash Player Plug-in (All other browsers) should allow you to access the pages and sites that IE11 won't. Download the uninstaller to do a complete uninstall of the Plugin first.

Report · Dec 17, 2013

Thank you for the reply.

Reason for asking is the following.

Over the last couple of weeks (..) I have spent really an awful lot of hours trying to figure out why, whilst measuring the download speed, my downloadspeed heavily jumps up and down, whereas with others, using the same method, it is straight as a line. Investiging this in depth, including folks from my ISP.

Am using 2 pc's both with dual lan, same results on both pc's and all ports, XP and Windows 7.

In the end a test was done by using a laptop from somebody else. Downloadspeed was really wonderful! Perfectly stable, well above advertised.It could not be better.

I then restored a 100% clean Windows XP image (image created immediately after installing XP, i.e. no updates, no video drivers, no audio drivers, no Antivirus, nothing)

Of course, even without Flash Player.

The browser, obviously, was waaayy outdated, viz. IE6.

Now Flash Player comes in...

1. Running the speedtest, IE6 asked for Flash Player to be installed. After installation the speedtest showed a perfect downloadspeed. Same as whilst using the laptop.

2. Downloaded/installed Firefox v26. Running speedtest - I had to install Flash Player again. Installed flash player. Did the speedtest again, downloadspeed was crap.

Have combined two screenshots.

Again, screenshot was from a clean Windows XP: now only with

a. Flashplayer for IE

b. Firefox v26

c. Flashplayer ("for other browsers(?) - the one needed to be able to run the speedtest using Firefox.

Results

Searching for "flash player "download speed" speedtest firefox" I noticed a number of hits.

To test if indeed Flash Player is indeed playing a role the case, I would like to install an older version of flashplayer, i.e. I would like to run the speedtest with (e.g.) FP v.10.x installed for both IE and FF, if possible.

Downloaded/extracted the zipfile - but what now?

(see 3,4 and 5 in my first post)

Thanks again.

=

a little later:

I just now tried again on the XP-machine, SP3, IE8 FP11.9 installed

(the XP machine also includes all updates, Norton IS, and Office)

Report · Dec 19, 2013

Think it is impossible to communicate with Adobe directly?

For support one will always be redirected to the forum?

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Report · Dec 19, 2013

1 (800) 833-6687

That's available Monday thru Friday 6am - 7pm (PST)

Here's the kicker.

It's $39.99 per call (Prepaid) and that's whether they can resolve your issue or not.

Report · Dec 19, 2013

Cud this thread be deleted then? It serves no further purpose.thanks.

Report · Dec 19, 2013

Hi,

The implementations of Flash Player in Chrome, Internet Explorer and Firefox (and even Firefox between WinXP and Win7) are all significantly different software.

In the face of the modern security threat landscape, one of the security-in-depth measures we've taken is an approach called sandboxing, which attempts to isolate the Flash Player processes that deal with untrusted content, and handles that content while operating with the least privileges possible. This way if a potential exploit does slip through our defenses and our process ends up under the control of malicious code, that code lacks the permission to do anything interesting. A more technical explanation of the approach can be found here: http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2012/06/inside-flash-player-protected-mode-for-firefox.html

All of this additional processing and communication comes at a cost, and the sandboxing approaches in Chrome, IE and Firefox are significantly different. Modern Chrome and IE browsers impose sandboxing on plug-ins at an architectural level, while we've retrofitted a sandboxing approach to Firefox.

A retrofitted approach is necessarily less efficient, and you're seeing a bottleneck there as we pass each downloaded packet through multiple processes in order to achieve the necessary level of isolation. We've already tuned this significantly. I think you would see a performance jump in Firefox if you went back to Flash Player 10, because you would have a version that pre-dates protected mode.

Long story short, diagnosing network problems using Flash is probably not the best approach.

The bandwidth measurement tool is downloading data through Flash because it makes it easy to write a pretty user interface. This is probably not representative of most of the things you're downloading, aside from streaming video.
The version of Flash installed isn't going to affect a typical file download in the browser, or your BitTorrent throughput.
Having one sample for each browser isn't enough to draw any meaningful conclusions. There are too many possible factors that could affect throughput to allow you to use a small sample. This data is going to be very noisy. At minimum, you'd want dozens of samples at various time periods for each target.
There are excellent, purpose-built network diagnostic tools available for conducting a meaningful analysis.

With respect to the confusion about what asset to install:

Our archived versions are intended for use by Flash developers with an understanding of the technology. All of these versions have known security vulnerabilities, and we absolutely do not recommend them for general web browsing. You should always run the current version of Flash Player.

Internet Explorer uses ActiveX controls for plug-ins. Most other browsers use the Netscape Plug-In API (NPAPI Plug-In). Chrome and Chromium-based browsers use a more modern PPAPI (Pepper Plug-in API Architecture).

So for Internet Explorer, you want the flashplayer10_3r183_20_winax.exe (win = Windows, ax = ActiveX) installer.

When a website presents you with an "Install Flash" message, that message is generated by JavaScript on the page. Sometimes that JavaScript makes bad assumptions (like Internet Explorer or Flash versions will be single-digits) or they require a minimum version of Flash because they're dependent on Features in those versions, or want to encourage you to be secure.

Hope that helps!

Report · Dec 20, 2013

Hello to you,

Thank you so much for your elaborate explanation. It is truly appreciated! It does shed some light on this mysterious matter.

It may indeed be that other users are still working with an older version of IE with an older FlashPlayer (e.g. v.10.x)

The only time I actually succeeded in getting a very stable 300Mbps test, was with IE6 .. on my XP machine

(see my first graph)

After updating it to IE8 the speedgraph was crap, same as with Firefox.

Your post explains the 'jumpy' speedgraphs on my Windows 7 x64 machine with IE11 en FF v26.

Honestly speaking, I am not so much in favor of Chrome, but maybe that is because I got used to Firefox and its plug-ins.

That said and just to see the results only - I installed Chrome (current version being v31.0)

FWIW below are the results.

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Again, thanks!

Report · Dec 20, 2013

Gotta be honest with you. I'd give (an unnameable body part) to have speeds like that. Here's what I live with:

Report · Dec 21, 2013

Yes I understand.Before my recent provider switch, early November, I could only dream of your speeds.. At best I had a 6Mbit/s speed, that regularly had to re-sync about a dozen times per hour (really), having only 1 provider to select from...

The provider even had to manually reduce their entry level speed of 8Mbit/s->6Mbit/s, 8Mbits being way too flaky.

Oh, FWIW

I just now also did a test by downloading a 1GB bin-file from a speedtest site, here close by, comparing IE11, FF v26 and Chrome v31

The site regretfully is capped at 140Mbits

IE11: avg. 137Mbit/s

FF26: avg.130Mbit/s

"Speedy"Chrome did not get any further than 88Mbit/s (140Mbits - 37%)

Measured using NetWorx -> SpeedMeter.

I don't like Chrome, will remove it, just installed it for these tests only.

Anyway, thanks!

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Report · Dec 22, 2013

Just to finalize this discussion - I just did some additional test to see the impact of all the 'precautions' around Flash Player and would like to share those.

Again, tests are on a clean Windows XP machine, with nothing else installed, no audio- or video drivers, no updates (SP), no antivirus, ie the XP you've got immediately after installing from CD-ROM

The tests are done using a router, but there is no difference in the results to nót using it.

1. XP with IE6 and Flash Player v.10.2

2. XP with Firefox v26 and Flash Player v.11.9

3. XP with Chrome v31 and Flash Player v.11.9

(no adjustments to the browsers, so downloaded, installed, test)

4. Windows 7 x64, Internet Explorer v10, Flash Player v11.9 (pc I usually work from)

Internetspeed 300Mbps up/down (fiber)

Surprising Chrome results...

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Report · Jan 05, 2014

Wish to add a short follow up.

As for speedtests on Windows 7 x64:

discovered that Kaspersky Internet Security 2014 was the cause.

I had to un-install it for a couple of reasons (some matters did not work properly, although, technically, they should) and replaced it with Norton Internet Security 2014.

(Note: I have been a Kaspersky fan for many years, so to some level I know my way around in the settings,etc)

With NIS installed the problems were solved and ... the download speedtests were perfect!

This is with both Firefox v26 and IE10 with Flash Player v11.9

Both browsers showed speeds above 315Mbp, mostly around 320Mbps.

Above this level Firefox showed slightly more fluctuations than IE10, but this is to be ignored.

I have no explanation for the very unstable speeds on Windows XP without any security installed though, but that is unimportant.

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Report · Jan 06, 2014

You'll find Norton is almost as bad as the stuff it's supposed to ptotect you from.

Properly configured, it won't have the "bottlenecking" effect on your connection speeds, but locally it will cause you to go bald yanking your hair out as it "protects you from yourself".

Honestly, the whole idea of Antivirus got to be so disgusting eleven years ago, that I switched to Mac. I've NEVER run any antivirus on any Mac I've owned, an I've never had a virus or a connection problem.