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fanjules
Participating Frequently
February 19, 2011
Question

"the activex control for flash player could not be registered" - Solutions Roundup

  • February 19, 2011
  • 2 replies
  • 5672 views

I recently ran into this problem on my computer:

http://at32.s3.amazonaws.com/flash_install_problems2.jpg

http://at32.s3.amazonaws.com/flash_install_problems2.jpg

I am a Flash developer (as in I write SWFs, I don't work for Adobe).  and when I updated IE to 10.2, "the activex control for flash player could not be registered".  Since I am a developer, I also have Firefox and Chrome installed, with Flash running without problems.  For a long time now, Internet Explorer has used a different version (ActiveX) to the other browsers, which use plugins.  I am a strong supporter of Flash, it's great to develop with and has a very wide feature set which is growing all the time, unlike fixed technologies/standards.  However, the weakest part is the install process - I don't understand why their is a Download Manager.  Google Chrome does it's best (so far) by managing the install/update process entirely in the background.  Anyway, it was in my best interest to try and get to the bottom of this.

For the record, on the problem machine I have Windows 7 with IE8, but I have seen almost  identical symptoms with IE9, Windows XP SP3, as well as various  iterations of Flash Player (10.0, 10.1, 10.2 and even some final  editions of version 9).

First I tried the standard support here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/191/tn_19166.html

Basically, doing the manual uninstall and manual install of the latest version (without using the download manager, or have IE open).  This did not work.  I also tried the Microsoft "subinacl" program, together with "reset_fp10.bat".  This didn't work either.  However, you should try all of these things first before progressing further.

A quick note about people who had tried running the following at a command prompt: "secedit /configure /cfg %windir%\repair\secsetup.inf /db secsetup.sdb /verbose"
I didn't do this, because on investigating further it didn't seem to work with Windows 7, only Windows XP, Windows 2000 or Windows 2003 - though there was a few threads where this had fixed the problem for some users.

For my solution, it is recommended you use the manual uninstall / installers, so you should have them downloaded ready to use.

I then heard about problems with permissions in the registry with the key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\shockwaveflash.shockwave

So I opened regedit.exe (start - run - typed "regedit.exe"), navigated to the key and sure enough, I couldn't open it - permission denied - even though I had an administrator account.  If for some reason, you can access this key (and any subkeys), then it's likely the following fix will not resolve the problem.

I then done further diagnosis, by using Process Monitor to try and install Flash Player, and I got the following:

http://at32.s3.amazonaws.com/flash_install_problems.gif

http://at32.s3.amazonaws.com/flash_install_problems.gif

This shows all the access denied errors the Flash Player install was experiencing when trying to write to the registry key.  This confirmed that this was the problem.  I only stress this because several people said it was unwise to tinker with the registry.  Though this is common advice, this is the only known fix for this precise problem at present, since you need to manually adjust the permissions yourself.  I don't know who is at fault here - Microsoft or Adobe - but let's just get Flash fixed...

The solution:

Firstly, you may want to backup your registry, or the exact key.  I didn't do this so I've provided no instructions on how to, but it is recommended for the paranoid.  Also make sure as much software is closed down as possible - browsers, IM software, any junk in your system tray. As way of example, I happened to have "BBC iPlayer" installed and running in the background which uses Adobe AIR and Flash Player, so I exited that too.

1) Open regedit (start - run - type "regedit.exe").  You may need to right click on it and select "Run As Administrator", but I didn't as my account was already administrator.

2) Navigate to the key. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\shockwaveflash.shockwave

Click on it to confirm that you cannot access it (you will get an error) - if their are no problems - this probably isn't the cause of your issues.

3) Right click on it and click Permissions, and ignore any message that may pop up.

4) Under "Group or Usernames" click "Add".  Type your account name name, or "Administrators" in the box, then "Check Names" to format it correctly, then Ok.

5) Now on the next screen click the checkbox to enable Full Control (this will also automatically enable "Read" permission too).

6) Click Advanced, then the "Owner" tab at the top.  You will see that their is no "Current Owner".  This is what we will now fix.

7) Click on your name to change the owner to (I went for Administrators).  Also enable the checkbox entitled "Replace Owner on subcontainers and objects".  Then click Ok.  You will get an error message, which you can try clicking Retry to, but hit Cancel - this is not a problem.

😎 Click Ok a couple of times and this part of your registry is now fixed.

9) Now it's a simple case of running the manual Flash uninstall program, then finally the manual Flash installer (for Active X - not the Firefox/Chrome plugin versions).  To my surprise, after a couple of days looking into this - I finally had a solution and Flash in IE once more.  If you are using Firefox too you may find Flash is no longer installed their (the uninstaller removed it).  In this case just install via the Adobe site or try to watch a video on You Tube and you will be prompted or linked to the install.

Hope this provides a good round up of the possible solutions to this problem.  Hopefully Microsoft or Adobe can find out what causes this issue in the first place so we don't have to go down this route for much longer.  Chrome's implementation of Flash shows how effortlessly things can work!

    This topic has been closed for replies.

    2 replies

    pwillener
    pwillener
    Legend
    February 20, 2011

    fanjules wrote:

    2) Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\shockwaveflash.shockwave

    Actually, I do not have such a key in my registry; all I have is

    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.1
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.3
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.4
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.5
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.6
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.7
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.8
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.9
    HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.10

    So do you still have that key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Classes\shockwaveflash.shockwave in your registry, or is it a temporary key only used during the installation?

    F
    fanjulesAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    February 20, 2011

    Check your list again - that key is actually there.

    The other keys only appear after successfull installation.  I guess if somebody is having trouble uninstalling they could check the permissions on those keys, but since I did not have that specific problem I can only surmise.  The uninstall program worked fine for me, and I did not have those keys even though I had 10.1 installed prior to the problems.

    F
    fanjulesAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    February 20, 2011

    As a way of completness and to try and squeeze every possible avenue into this thread (I had to do a lot of research prior to fixing my own machine across many many forum topics!), I also want to link any users still having problems to this post, on disabling the killbit:

    http://forums.adobe.com/message/3432049#3432049

    I could not find the key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\ActiveX Compatibility\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}" on my system, which meant my problem lied elsewhere, but a number of users seemed to have this set by over-enthusiastic security software.

    Speaking of security, it's also recommended you set IE to all of it's default security modes.  File - Tools - Internet Options - Security.... then click on each zone and click "Default Level" (if defaults are already in place this will be greyed out).  Using default settings has been a sound policy for many years now, as I've had users report problems with even very simple javascript because they've turned up security to the max through paranoia.  If you have good anti-virus/firewall software you should not have to worry about those security settings.

    pwillener
    pwillener
    Legend
    February 19, 2011

    Thank you for these detailed information; it is very useful, as I have seen cases in the past where the SubInACL procedure did not fix the "could not be registered" error.

    One question: when Process Monitor sees the registry errors, do they stay on the screen, or will it go away when the process is complete?  (Just in case I will ask someone with a similar problem to run Process Monitor during the installation.)

    F
    fanjulesAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    February 19, 2011

    They will stay on the screen.  However, Process Monitor is only intended for advanced users.  It is recommended that users try to navigate to the troublesome registry key using regedit, and see if they can access it or not without an error.  This is far easier than trying to use Process Monitor, which is very complicated.

    I used Process Monitor to confirm that it was just that key which was causing the problem, and not others.  Process Monitor is not to be confused with the new Resource Monitor which is accessible via Task Manager in Windows 7 (and possibly Vista).  If you must experiment (and Process Monitor is very useful for diagnosing many deep-level problems if you know what you're looking for) Process Monitor can be downloaded from here:


    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645

    It replaces the older Sysinternals "FileMon" and "RegMon".  For those interested in the technical side, I had to setup a number of filters to be able to get the results display as in the screenshot.  First of all to just show Registry events.  Then to just show events from the manual Flash activeX installer executable.  The I added a filter to show only non-successfull results.  And finally, for the purposes of the screenshot, added a filter to just show those with "Access Denied", since other non-critical errors are also picked up due to missing keys because installation has not yet been fully completed I guess.   When experimenting, most of these filters were applied using the "is not" boolean logic, which will make sense if you experiment with the program.

    Without adding any filters, it picks up so many events (hundreds per second) that it's otherwise unusable.  e.g. 40,000 events within the first few seconds of opening the program. For this reason, I recommend simply using Regedit to diagnose the problem with the particular Flash registry key.

    pwillener
    pwillener
    Legend
    February 20, 2011

    The poblem is, without a tool like Process Monitor, we don't know what registry key has the permission problem.  It is - to the best of my knowledge - also not mentioned in the FlashInstall.log file.

    I know it will be difficult to have technically challenged users use Process Monitor, but it may be the only way to find out what key needs altered permissions (in the rare cases where SubInACL does not work).

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