Possible fix for flash not working in Windows 10 with IE11 and Edge

[henkk71822372]

As my others I struggled with Flash not working in Edge or Internet Explorer.

Using ProcessMonitor I found that Internet explorer and Edge try to read a value from the registry, but this is denied due to insufficient rights to the following key:

"HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\application/x-shockwave-flash"

I fixed it by changing the permissions on "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\ Content Type" and granting read permission to all "application packages" (Not sure if that is the actual name since I have a dutch system).

So here's what you need to do:

Start Regedit

Navigate to "HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database'ContentType"

Open the context menu by pressing the right mouse button

Select 'Permissions'

In the top selection list select 'all application packages'

Make sure a only checkmark is set to allow read

Press the advanced button

Check the "replace all child objects.... " (at the bottom of the dialog)

Press OK or Apply

*WARNING* Changing the registry could damage your windows installation. If you are uncertain on how to change this setting ask someone who does.

Making a backup first is always wise!

[Kratika Agarwal]

Hi,

What is the FP version are you using?

Thanks

[henkk71822372]

FP 22.0.0.192, but I do not think that is relevant.

The computer I had the problem on was migrated from Windows 7 recently and I believe that something went wrong with the migration of the (user rights assignment) of the specified registry key.

Basically all processes and users should have read access to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type, but for some reason the Content Type key did not inherit the read rights properly.

[jeromiec83223024]

Yeah, this totally fits with my intuition.  I haven't been able to reproduce the scenario to walk it backwards to the problem entry.  I'll share this with the folks at Microsoft.  Thanks!

[NatsFan8]

I have checked the local machine administrator users and Flash works fine.  My "normal" user account is a network user and when I attempt to set the permissions on the registry (running regedit as administrator from the network user account) I get an error "Registry Editor could not set security in the key currently selected, or one of its subkeys"

This was a Win 8.1 machine upgraded to Win 10 if that matters.

[jeromiec83223024]

Well, it sounds like you're on the right track, but you're unable to modify the problematic key because it's corrupted or otherwise in a bad state.  You're very much into dangerous territory, and you'd be very wise to make sure that you have backups (and that they work) at this point.

In general, I try to stay away from upgrade installs of operating systems, because there's an infinite possibility of states of the old machine, and the upgrader has to handle all of them perfectly.  It's not a good recipe for success.  In this instance, something weird has propagated from the old install to the new one, or something valid just got corrupted along the way.  Either way, you have an ugly problem on your hands.

All of these suggestions are just guesses, and there are no guarantees.  You're well off the beaten path at this point, and you may want to weigh carefully whether or not the cure is worse than the disease.

Here's what I would look at, in order of invasiveness:

1. Boot into safe mode and retry the regedit operation.  If it works, you're (hopefully) done.
2. Try and delete the registry key, reboot, and see if Windows just fixes it automatically.
   1. If you were able to delete it, but you broke IE, you could probably uninstall the last Windows Update for Internet Explorer, then re-apply it by running Windows Update and end up in a working state.
3. Try modifying the child nodes of that registry key individually.  When you find the problem one, try deleting it with the Windows SysInternals tools.

I'm keeping things vague, because if you're not comfortable mucking around with the Windows internals, or with the possibility you might end up having to do a clean install of Win10 at the end of this exercise because you've hopelessly messed up the machine, you probably shouldn't do any of this, and simply install Chrome as a workaround on the standard user account.