Flash Player and Vista not Playing Nice?
While populating the link blog, I found this forum post regarding some problems with Windows Vista and Flash Player 9. They mention that with the Administrator account, they can’t view Flash sites without turning User Control off (that sweet Vista feature that makes you confirm everything you do).
I’ve been using Vista for a while and I’ve also noticed some odd issues with Flash and the operating system. Most of the problems tend to be on IE7, which isn’t the browser I primarily use, so I don’t run into them often. Most of the time they seem to be just annoying little things, but when they’ve happened, they’ve struck me as things that normal users would be thrown by.
I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy at all, and as I said, all of my issues have been minor, so I don’t remember specifics at all. I do wonder if other people have run into issues with Flash and Vista though. The tech elite seem to all have switched to Mac, so Vista issues rarely come up.
[tags]Vista, Flash Player, Adobe, Microsoft, Windows[/tags]
Posted in Rich Internet Applications
March 31st, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I’ve also seen an uptick in support issues, particularly when both IE7 and Vista are combined. Permissions are indeed frequently the root cause.
I also don’t know the decision-making process that brought this about, and so can’t speculate either.
jd/adobe
March 31st, 2007 at 6:28 pm
Why is it that Microsoft blocks certain browsers from loading their products… isn’t that an attempt to make the general public use their products?
Ryan, I know you say that you don’t feel it’s a conspiracy but I think theres more to it than people talk about, for web developers it’s usually not that big of an issue when we run into those types of problems as we have multiple browsers installed but what about the everyday consumer who, I would think, get tired or frustrated with “the little things Microsoft does”?
April 1st, 2007 at 9:59 pm
This is really frustrating to read. Mainly they are going through with Flash the same thing that Sun went through to get a good Java plug-in for IE7.
It isn’t that Microsoft has blocked anyone or “making” their product not run.. The reality of this is that IE 7 offers way more internal security than it used to, certain features like direct filesystem access and things that require full trust to run have been “fenced” off.
To Microsoft’s credit, they told everyone about these new features way way before Vista and IE ever released and B1..
There was plenty of time for companies to develop to the new security standards. The problems people are having now are simply because the plug-ins simply try to do things that are no-nos. Microsoft may have went a little bit overboard with security, but I’d rather them do that then not.
Everything in IE runs in a “Sandbox” in separate memory space what I like to call a “bubble”.. That keeps these programs like the flash player and java which directly access features like the filesystem and memory and things that can be exploited by malware and viruses not to be. Like putting a big fence around your browser to protect it. The biggest hole was ActiveX controls.
Microsoft has went out of the way to protect its users and made Vista one of the largest sweeping betas and made the information transparently available to companies like Adobe and Sun.
Now instead of pointing the finger at Microsoft saying this doesn’t work and trashing Vista you guys should be complaining at the companies who write the plug-ins who were told a long time ago “sorry guys you can’t do this anymore and this feature won’t work like this anymore” because we are actually adding security.
They were told in significant time about these changes to make them.
People at Sun already acknowledge what they went thru adapting their Java plug-in for IE 7 and Vista. Maybe Adobe needs still some work on theirs.
See this blog entry by Chet Haase (it’s very telling see his problem summary):
http://weblogs.java.net/blog/chet/archive/2006/10/java_on_vista_y.html
If Adobe’s reading this and I suspect they “might” be, where is the IE 7 64bit flash player too??
Oh wait it’s on the list behind Photoshop CS3. I get it..
April 1st, 2007 at 10:10 pm
People having trouble with the flash player might find this blog entry helpful as well.. It talks about flash, DEP (data execution protection), and Adobe Software..
http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_howard/archive/2006/12/12/update-on-internet-explorer-7-dep-and-adobe-software.aspx
April 1st, 2007 at 11:31 pm
[...] Flash Player and Vista not Playing Nice? While populating the link blog, I found this forum post regarding some problems with Windows Vista and Flash Player 9. They mention that with the Administrator account, they can’t view Flash sites without turning User Control off (that sweet Vista feature that makes you confirm everything you do). I’ve been using Vista for a while and I’ve also noticed some odd issues with Flash and the operating system. Most of the problems tend to be on IE7, which isn’t the browser I primarily use, so I don’t run into them often. Most of the time they seem to be just annoying little things, but when they’ve happened, they’ve struck me as things that normal users would be thrown by. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy at all, and as I said, all of my issues have been minor, so I don’t remember specifics at all. I do wonder if other people have run into issues with Flash and Vista though. The tech elite seem to all have switched to Mac, so Vista issues rarely come up. Source:Ryan Stewart – Rich Internet Application Mountaineer » Flash Player and Vista not Playing Nice? [...]
April 1st, 2007 at 11:31 pm
[...] I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy at all, and as I said, all of my issues have been minor, so I don’t remember specifics at all. I do wonder if other people have run into issues with Flash and Vista though. The tech elite seem to all have switched to Mac, so Vista issues rarely come up. Source:http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=743 [...]
April 2nd, 2007 at 12:15 pm
“The problems people are having now are simply because the plug-ins simply try to do things that are no-nos.”
Like getting installed…?
Macromedia/Adobe have been pretty quick in accommodating MS OS changes, whether from signed-binary deliverables, the click-to-activate issue, even up to the point of updating *old* Players with new security fixes (Macromedia Flash Player 5 was rev’d in ’06 expressly for Microsoft).
To see how quickly Flash Player changed in response to the shifts during Vista development, try Emmy Huang’s notes:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/mtadmin/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=33&search=vista
No 64-bit memory addressing is available yet, regardless of operating system brand… links here:
http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/01/64-bit_developm.cfm
“The biggest hole was ActiveX controls.”
That’s what I told ‘em ten years ago, when they reinvented Netscape Plugins and the EMBED tag, but did they listen? Nooo-oo….
Bottom line: Consumers who go MS-brand seem to be having more difficulties using other technologies now. From the outside, it’s hard for any of us to be sure of the intention behind these changes.
jd/adobe
June 19th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I am also, having problems when Vista and flash player. It is telling me that I need to download the newest version. When I do this it is telling me that Vista does not support this. This is not right to the people who when out and got Vista Windows and did not know what they were getting themselves into. Help us.
June 30th, 2007 at 1:11 am
Hey Ryan sorry to get off of the “call Microsoft on all their intentional bugs” but I did have a question about your blog, when are you going to upgrade to some sort of RIA for your site? Something that you can give us to brag about and ms & silverlight users to complain about =0P
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:10 am
Greetings ~
Here’s the deal with Flash Player and Vista. The new version they have posted works (as of August). However, a regular install won’t activate the control. This blog has the answers. Simply run the uninstall utility from adobe (if you already have it installed and it isn’t working.) Then, run the install again. When it prompts you to restart the browser after the application is done installing, stop the IE service in the services manager and then reboot your computer – you shouldn’t select yes or no to the request to close the browser – just reboot. Then Flash will work. I spent days working on this, but I’m sure it will work now.
Ronnie
September 4th, 2007 at 1:39 am
I´m also having problems with Vista and the Adobe Flash player. I have installed Flash, but Vista always telling me that I need to download the newest version. I don´t know what to do, i will try to install Vista new…
September 5th, 2007 at 10:30 pm
I’m ridiculously confused– I use Safari on my Vista computer, but it won’t even let me install Flash. It’s telling me I need the right system priveliges, and I should use an administrator account, but my account is the only one on the computer, so of course it’s the administrator. Anyone that can help?
October 25th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
I just got EI 7 and Flash Player to work. I had to go to Microsofts web site and download the latest and greatest ActiveX control. This took about five minutes with a high-speed conection.
The problem I had was this: Every time I tried to download Flash Player 9 I got an error message saying that security settings would not allow the download because the site MAY contain harmful code, or some such nonesense. A big problem for me was the fact that Windows would not tell me how to get around this problem, nor did it ask for premission to conduct the download anyway.
What was Microsoft thinking when they put so many security blocks into VISTA? At least give me control over my own system!
November 21st, 2007 at 7:55 am
I am having the same problem with my Vista/Flash/IE. I am going to try some of the suggestions here and I will let you know which one worked for me. Would I be having these problems if I used Firefox or another browser? I wasn’t having problems until yesterday, so I’m not sure what happened… it’s like something went haywire with my computer and now I can’t see anything on Youtube or listen to music on Myspace. And I have the most up to date Flash player and I have enabled active scripting.