Corrupt Flash Player install after IE 7 upgrade

I’ve been seeing a few mails about this since the Internet Explorer update was released, so I wanted to post some info about it to maybe help the people having issues.

The complaint generally goes something like this:

A user has Flash Player 9 (or other version) installed on their system and everything works fine with IE6. That user then runs the IE7 update and their computer stops showing Flash content on sites like YouTube or MSN video and other Flash sites. However, if the user goes to some other sites with Flash content, the content will play just fine, even if the site requires the Flash 9 Player.

I’m not sure of the official cause for this, and am still doing some research into what causes it, but a first guess I have is that when you upgrade from IE7, the browser install is not correctly reinstalling your existing Flash Plugin, so scripts that check for the Flash Player are failing, but since the plugin file is there, if you visit a site that does not use a detection script (like SWFObject) you will see the Flash content just fine.

There may not be a solution to this for the sites using detection scripts – they rely on a series of Windows registry entries that seem to be missing after an IE7 upgrade.

For users, here is a fix that seems to work well:

  1. Quit all open programs. This step is important because other programs may be using the Flash Player, and if they are, the uninstaller will fail silently.
  2. Run the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller.
  3. Reinstall your Flash player.

If you are still having problems after running the uninstaller and reinstalling the plugin, please post a comment with your system setup and other relevant details. (And remember, sometimes a system restart can make a difference with problems like this, so try that first).

UPDATE (1-8-2007): Added a new step 1.

221 thoughts on “Corrupt Flash Player install after IE 7 upgrade

  1. I have been having this problem since I first tried IE7 beta. I have tried uninstalling back to 6, redoing SP2 and the fix you mention above. Nothing works.

    System: P4 2.8
    512 MB RAM
    XP Pro SP2
    IE7 7.0.5730

  2. Could this perhaps be the new more restrictive Security of IE7 that is causing this? The user gets a popup asking for permission to run an ActiveX control that a detection script uses. The user refuses to click OK.

    This appears to be the case for some with QuickTime plugin detection. I have heard complaints about Java detection as well.

    The plugins themselves can run, but instantiating certain ACtiveX controls for detection may not be pre-approved by IE7.

    Wonderful.

  3. This has nothing to do with the install- Eric is correct. To accomodate IE7, web developers have had to adjust the way they display Flash on their sites. For sites that have not done this you will see a giant hole where the Flash object should be.

    Yay Microsoft!

  4. No, I’m pretty sure it’s not new security issues with the browser. This is specifically related to how the Flash Player plugin is installed and/or upgraded when you upgrade the browser.

  5. The problem I have with Flash and IE7 is stranger than most posts I’ve seen to date. On the same workstation, I have one user account that works fine with Flash v9 and IE7 and one user account that does not. Both UA are admin level and appear to be have the same permissions. The UA that does not run Flash continually receive prompts from sites like XM Radio, GM, etc requesting the user to download the latest Flash version from Adobe and if you do that Adobe will respond with a positive confirmation that the latest has been downloaded.

    I have tried to completely rid myself of all Flash versions by using the recommended uninstaller, restarting the machine and downloading the latest Flash version. All appears to be good but when you try one of the sites needing Flash using the UA that wouldn’t run Flash before you still end up with the same download request from the site. Thoughts or help on this would greatly appreciated.

  6. I even tried going back to Flash version 8 and still have the same problem. Seems that as long as I don’t close out the browser things are great. Once I close it, I have to uninstall and reinstall.

    System: P4 2.8
    512 MB RAM
    XP Pro SP2
    IE7 7.0.5730

  7. I have this problem as well, it is driving me crazy.
    Followed all the instructions for removing/installing flash, didn’t work.
    Also set flash player and shockwave permissions in the registry for all users,
    Ran an ‘upgrade’ from the WinXP x64 OS setup disk and nothing is working.
    I hope there is a solution for this soon; our clients use a flash app for support and I cannot use our app to send feedback to them as it uses the swfobject script.
    So now I’m left with using a laptop with my computer.

  8. I do have the same problem just like Stewart. 2 identical computers, one running fine with flashplayer, the other won’t. Both machine have WindowXP SP2, IE7.
    Drive me crazy

  9. I believe the problem is with Flash Player 9.0. With previous versions of Flash Player, the various Flash registry keys were automatically set up with a range of permissions. One of our machines running 8.0 has these permissions. With FP 9.0, these registry keys are set up so that the ONLY account that has ANY permissions whatsoever is the administrator account used to install it. In other words, Flash Player 9.0 can only be used effectively by the Windows XP Pro SP2 account used to install it. I just spent 3 hours proving it. Where is Adobe on this?

  10. One further comment. Once you’ve installed Flash Player 9.0, you have to use Adobe’s uninstall program on the user account used to install it, or those Flash registry keys with limited permissions don’t get removed, and subsequent attempts to reinstall FP 9.0 don’t work. I was able to uninstall it for one administrator account, and then install it on another administrator account and got it to work on that account – but no other. Am sticking with 8.0 on other PCs.

  11. Solved it, i uninstalled IE7 which returned IE6 and then used firefox for everything except the small handfull of sites that have not changed to work with firefox

  12. Bernard Said:
    Solved it, i uninstalled IE7 which returned IE6 and then used firefox for everything except the small handfull of sites that have not changed to work with firefox
    —————

    Hey, waddayaknow! This solution worked for me too! Down with the M$ oligarchy.

  13. This has been annoying me for a while now as I have had Flash9 running in IE at home with no problems and then on my work laptop it was totally f’d up…I just used the adobe flash uninstaller to completely uninstall it and then downloaded the full flash 9 player installer msi and now I have flash 9 running in ie7 like a charm. I downloaded the msi at http://www.softwarepatch.com/internet/flash.html. Hope this helps anyone else who this was a problem for.

  14. I have a similar problem with intermittent Flash Player operation. So far, all Flash websites seem to work with the exception of Google Finance (which of course is the one I need the most). Google Finance uses Flash to display charts, news flags, splits, et. The problem goes like this… Google Finance works fine for about a day or two, then the various flags stop appearing. I use the Flash uninstaller, restart the PC, reinstall the player, and it works fine again for a few days. Every couple days I have to go through this process. I never see any errors or obvious signs of corruption. This started once I upgraded from IE6 to IE7. I am running WinXP SP2, IE7 (everything was fine with IE6 by the way). Today I will attempt to install with the .msi instead of through the Adobe site…

  15. I am experiencing a problem whereby flash videos do not display and websites like Youtube and Google Video do not display properly at all, this is after installing IE7, and I have Flash player 9, I have tried unistalling both Flash and IE7 and still doesnt work. I am running XP SP2 (and using the account which was used to install Flash.)

  16. UPDATE: Just installed latest version of Firefox which I had never used before, on opening Youtube.com I was prompted to install “missing Flash plugins” the site displays perfectly but still nothing in IE7. I think may be abondoning IE once and for all as there was another slight problem which I overlooked, that in several websites after loading the message in the status bar would read “done, but with errors on page” and some content did not appear.

  17. I was having the same probem since updating to IE7. I just fixed it. I had to unistall Flash with the uninstaller exe. I downloaded Flash plug in 7 from the Adobe site. It installed fine. Then I updated the player and now Flash 9 works. It only took me forever to figure it out.
    Tweaking the registry didn’t help at all in a previous attempt..

  18. Does anyone have examples of sites that are doing this? I have found this true on http://www.directpointe.com. If anyone with this issue can verify that this is happening for them it would help. I have also found one case in IE6 Flash9.

    There should be a lady talking to you in the main masthead for the site. Please let me know what you find.

  19. Curtis: This isn’t really a problem with specific websites, it’s a problem with certain people’s Flash Player installs.

  20. One thing that might help everyone with this issue – I found that the machines that are having problems do not have administrative privileges.

    So the question is if so many people are having this issue what can we do about it for the users/viewers that we can not send through the whole uninstall/reinstall process? Is there a work around? Something that we can do that will produce the results we need without having to force the user through such an experience?

  21. My issue, stated in my 11Jan07 post, occurs only on my home PC, but not on my work laptop. Both have admin privelleges. Since my post, I have removed IE7 and went back to IE6. I then uninstalled Flash 9 with the uninstall utility and the reinstalled it from the MSI. It was fine until today, and now Google Finance is not working propperly for me, again. I reinstalled Flash and it was fine. The only difference between my PC and my laptop is that I had “upgraded” to IE7 at one point on my PC, which is when the problem began. Now it seems like I am stuck with it even using IE6.

  22. I’m a web developer who created a little flash app that scrolls non-repeating images at random across the top of the site, which pull from a single folder in the same directory as the swf – http://www.nwresd.k12.or.us/ it’s not working consistently in IE7, despite working great in 6, anything on the mac, FF, etc. It seems to be linked to this issue. What’s strange is that some photos load, others don’t. I found a few bug report from one of the betas talking about bad http requests without any real pattern. It looks like the problem may be centered around that moment when the swf reaches out to load a jpg from that folder. Anyway – thought I’d articulate the problem here in the hopes that maybe it could get us (and you) closer to a solution!

  23. The suggestion worked for me, I uninstalled flash (Using the link given) and then re-installed it. Thanks

  24. Upgraded to IE7 and didn’t have any issues with Flash until I attempted to visit Citizen Watch site. Would not open and I tried a -reinstall of the Flash and a re-boot. Site worked fine with Firefox. Tried the fix posted by Johnsy on Dec 27, 07 here and it is working fine now with IE7
    Go to this site to fix problem problem http://weblogs.asp.net/derekh/archive/2005/08/16/422743.aspx

    Thanks All,

    Bob Allen

  25. I am surprised that so many users on a ‘web development’ blog use IE for their personal use! I can understand trying to find work arounds for end-users of a website and the general web-surfing population, but I would have thought more visitors to this site would be savvy enough to be using FF if they are on a PC.

  26. Just wanted to say thanks for the fix. I tried reinstalling several times to no avail. Forgot to uninstall first. I like easy fixes, though this was hard to find!

  27. I’ve had the same problem and been looking for a solution all week. Has to be the detection changes in the Flash 9 player.
    For the general public who may be scared to download uninstallers, what’s the solution though? It looks like once you
    have a corrupt install the only way out is down this path, but won’t this silently mess up quite a few machines? Unless
    Adobe release a fix and people revisit the installer page in the hope of fixing the problem?

  28. Re: Comment by Peter — January 5, 2007 @ 11:43 am

    PETER,

    thank you. Your way worked for me. That 4MB installer finally worked after unistalling the Flash Pl. I now see flash in my IE7.

    Thank you again for sharing this.

    Jan

  29. We all know this is a very serious problem, there are millions of IE users out there including most of my clients. I’ve just encountered the problem and the uninstall didn’t work. Niether did saving down to earlier versions of Flash. Perhaps it’s a problem with how Flash 8 publishes HTML code… I copied the HTML generated by an earlier version of Flash and just subbed in my new file name and it’s working fine now. I read some place that the old EMBED tag was useless but if you put it back in, presto! Perhaps it will work for others.

  30. It’s to do with IE7 activex handling – it’s been changed. I had the same problem but as a site developer trying to make the site work for all browsers. I have had to upgrade to app we use to produce flash and change the javascript used to embed the movie into the site – now works in both ie7 and FF

  31. Ok, there’s a problem now with swfobject:
    How said before, IE7 changed the ActiveX stuff. By default the option “display activeX for secure scripts” (sorry don’t know the exactly translation, I use the german version) seems to be disabled. If you embed with swfobject, nothing happens.

    BUT:
    If you embed the html-way, it works. Further, some flash detections will not work (like on 2advanced.com) – they say flash isn’t installed, allthough it is.
    If you enable the option, swfobject and decection will work fine, but well – it’s not very professional to ask the user, if this option is enabled in the fallback version :-(.

  32. i just got internet explorer 7 and thats when my flash player quit working. when i uninstall and try to install it again it just downloads the active X control and nothing else. i have windows xp home edition, thanks a lot for your help!

  33. Hey, this worked perfectly for me…that shit was bothering the hell out of me, especially since i go to youtube often, and i cant view thier videos unless i copy the code for it, and then post on myspace or something without al the object and param tags…crazy ie7, but its all good, thanks for this fix, and for anybody still confused, do EXACTLY what this person said!!! restart your computer after you uninstal flash player, then when its freshly restarted, instal flash again (the latest version of course).. and badabing!!! Kudos to whoever wrote this little article here!

  34. Thank you for this post.

    Your recommendation worked perfectly for me.

    A little fuel for the question of “why” —

    I can’t remember whether I installed IE 7 or Flash Player 9 first, but I have IE 5.5 and IE 6 on my system. None of them worked, but Firefox and Opera did. The issue does not appear to be related to the browser itself (since IE 6 obviously works), but, as you said, perhaps the IE 7 install hurt the IE version of the plugin.

    Either way, the uninstall and reinstall (all on the same administrator account) has fixed my ailment.

  35. Its a problem with user-agent detection script code in the ‘player.html’ code of the file attempting to load there is no detection in the string for IE7 the UA its only checking for MSIE6 and MSIE5

  36. I’ve only had this same problem siince returning from out of town. I left on December 13th and had been having no problem with IE7 and FP. Upon returning on Ja. 30th, there was a month and a half of updates and patches waiting for me and it was after installing them that the problem started. I ran System Restore back to Dec. 13 and FlashPlayer again works. Now the question remains: Which update has caused the problem? I am curious. I’ll save this column and the two links to fixes when it happens again.

    Another problem has popped up though on a number of systems as well as my own: Windows defender no longer loads. Any thoughts?

  37. ..Thanks dude,worked easy step 1&2,I was begining to delete scripts! that did’nt work i have sp2 v7 browser,but im sure i was using utube etc after installing ie7! maybe i missed a weekend throu good beer,or tech is moving faster than others,again THANKS for the work.

  38. I have tried every Flash Player fix Adobe suggests including fixing the registry file. Their suggested reset.com will not run in the cmd prompt. It says “reset.cmd is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file”.Adobe should be the one fixing this problem not us end users. If I had my choice I’ll be damn if I’ll buy or use another one of their problems but the have a monopoly just like Microsoft so we’re screwed

  39. For a couple of weeks I have also been having an issue with flash content not displaying properly in IE7 on Win XP Pro. My problem seemed to be Mobile Code Control in Zone Alarm.
    I did Adobe’s uninstall/reinstall of Flash and registry key removal suggestions from their tech notes.
    Afterwards I found Flash worked fine with Zone Alarm off, but I had the same problem of Flash content not running with Zone Alarm on.
    I had recently read somewhere some site developers use VBScript to evoke Flash to run, this lead me to the Main tab on the Privacy section in Zone Alarm. I found that the Mobile Code Control was On. I clicked on Custom and unchecked both Block scripts and Block embedded objects.
    Now everything seems fine with Flash, for the time being anyway.

  40. There’s a dirty hack to force ie 7 to write the flash and is only used if the activex doesn’t work. It’s not ideal but until a better work around solution appears that’s what i shall be using. In the deconcept.SWFObjectUtil.getPlayerVersion function in the catch part of the try add the following code. (Note: I’ve set the code to automatically assume use of flash player 8, you can obviously choose which ever you deem necessary, however i think that most people would have player 8 by now)


    if(parseFloat(navigator.appVersion.substring(navigator.appVersion.indexOf('MSIE')+5)) == 7)
    {
    PlayerVersion = new deconcept.PlayerVersion([8,0,0]);
    }

  41. I’ve been trying to fix flash for 2 days,the (weblog) worked,thank you,I think there are other plug-ins that won’t work with ie7.

  42. I was wondering about the alternate content DIV, and if it has a few images in it, will it cause the page to load longer, if the end user does have flash. So do the flash and the alternate DIV images both get loaded? Anybody know the best practice on this concerning different browsers, etc.?

    I found these two posts, reposted below. Bu, want to know would i just place the Javascript below the alternate DIV then as is the case? And if any other issues might exist. Thanks Geoff et al.

    Comment by trixienolix — June 20, 2005 @ 12:26 pm

    Hey, thanks for the script it has been very useful. One thing I don’t understand is this: if my alternate content contains lots of images (e.g. a nav with rollover images).. do these get loaded even if the user has flash installed? or does the flash user only have to load the flash? Apologies if there is an obvious answer.. i’m not very techy
    thanks

    Comment by Geoff — June 20, 2005 @ 12:39 pm

    Well, I think of you place the js function to replace the alternate content just below it, then the browser won’t have a chance to load the alternate content, and the images won’t get loaded… But I haven’t tested this extensively, and different browsers might behave differently. If anyone wants to run some tests, I would be very interested in the results.

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