Occasionally, Adobe Flash Player which is uses on Youtube, Facebook, and many other websites for running videos tend to break which means you can’t see videos, play flash games with your browser, or the flash video is slow and unstable.
All you see is a blank white box, or nothing at all. Your browser might tell you to reinstall Adobe Flash Player which you already have installed.
In this post, I will teach you how to troubleshoot and fix Adobe Flash Player for most common Windows’ Web Browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome, etc, so you can start watching videos and playing flash games which were made to run on Windows based web browsers again.
1. The first thing you want to do is see if you can uninstall Adobe flash Player in Add/remove programs found in your control panel.
2. The Adobe Flash player activex is used for internet explorer, and internet Explorer based browsers in Windows. The Adobe Flash Plugin is used in FireFox, Opera and other browsers.
3. Uninstall the ActiveX version of the Adobe Flash Player if you are having problems with Flash for Internet Explorer. If you are having problems with Flash on FireFox, Opera, and other browsers uninstall the Plug-in version of Flash in Add/Remove programs in Windows.
4. If you notice Flash can not uninstall, visit http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html for more help and download : uninstall_flash_player.exe to uninstall Flash.
5. After you uninstall Flash, go to get.adobe.com/flashplayer/, to install the latest version of Flash. You might need to restart your web browser after installing flash to finish the installation of Adobe Flash Player.
If you are having trouble installing Adobe Flash Player from the web installer because your Adobe Flash Player keeps timing out, visit http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html to download the offline installer files for Windows 32bit and 64bit which do not require an internet connection or a fast connection to install like the web version.
By installing the latest version of Adobe Flash Player, Flash apps, games, and videos will run faster, be less buggy, and your computer will be more secure meaning it will be less likely to get hacked because of a security bug in Adobe Flash player.
6. If you notice flash still does not work on your web browser, try reinstalling your web browser to the latest version, or disabling all add-ons like toolbars, ad blockers, and plug-ins except for Adobe Flash Player to see if it is a web browser add-on which is causing Flash to fail.
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7. You can empty your temporary system and internet files, and Flash’s temporary files with BleachBit, CCleaner, and other disk cleanup to see if it makes a difference when Flash apps failed to load on a website.
I recommend running disk cleanups on a daily or weekly basis to prevent problems caused by a disk which have not been cleaned up in a long time.
CCleaner vs BleachBit vs Glary Utilities vs Windows 7 Disk Clean up amount of Junk files deleted Video
TFC Temp File Cleaner by OldTimer Cleans Temp Files from Windows
I once had a problem with Dailymotion not loading videos on Internet Explorer, and just displayed a white blank box, but after I fully cleared my browsing history and temporary file cache, videos loaded in Dailymotion again.
8. You can also try disabling hardware acceleration by right clicking a flash application like a flash game or Youtube video player with your mouse, and picking settings from the right click context menu. The first tab lets you disable and enable the hardware acceleration on Adobe Flash Player. However, you might experience slower performance since Flash will no longer use your Video Card to accelerate Flash apps.
9. Try updating your video card drivers to the latest version by going to your video card companies website to download and install the latest video card drivers for your operating system.
Note: If a webpage ask you to install a Codec, or Flash to view a video or play a game, it could be a trap to install a virus, spyware, or malware on your computer. It is best to go to Adobe.com to install Flash, and avoid installing codecs and weird plug-ins unless trusted programs like Windows Media player, Gom player, or other players you have installed on your PC ask you to install a codec. A lot of modern websites these days use Flash, HTML5, Java, Javascript, and MS Silverlight to playback video, and applications so a codec is not needed in most cases.
But, once I used CCleaner, Bleachbit, and ATF cleaner to clean all my system, flash, internet, and applications related temporary files, videos on dailymotion load on Internet Explorer again, and IE seem more stable also.
If you use Google Chrome, install the latest version of Google Chrome since Google Chrome now have Adobe Flash Player Built-in to it. All you do is go to the Wrench/settings icon in Google Chrome, and click on the “About Google Chrome” to install the latest version of Google Chrome and Flash on Google Chrome. If you are having problems displaying flash video in Google Chrome try reseting Chrome to default or removing plug-ins which might be blocking Chrome from displaying Flash.
Emptying Google’s chrome temporary internet files with CCleaner, Bleachbit, and other disk clean up utilities might help as well.
Completely uninstalling your web browser like Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc then restarting your computer, and reinstalling the latest version of your web browser and Adobe Flash Player which you got from the official web browser and Adobe Flash site may fix your problem.
If you tried all the above and nothing works, scan your computer for virus, malware, and spyware programs with your anti-virus and other security software to see if malware, virus, or spyware is preventing you from viewing flash videos.
Doing a System restore in Windows to an earlier date when Windows displayed Flash correctly might fix your Flash problems.
You can also try “temporary” turning off your antivirus and firewall to see if they are blocking flash from running, but it is very unlikely for your antivirus or firewall program to be causing problems for flash since security software will let Adobe Flash player run because it is a very popular software which is safe. If it is your antivirus or firewall program which is causing Adobe Flash player to not work, contact your security software company, or switch to Microsoft Security Essentials and Windows Firewall for Windows 7 and Vista. But, if you use Windows XP, don’t use the Windows Firewall since it does not have outgoing protection like the Windows 7 and Vista firewall.
Sometimes, the simplest solution is to just reinstall Windows or do a repair install of Windows where you run the installer from the Windows CD from within Windows to replace broken files.
In my experience, I mostly find Internet Explorer to have problems viewing flash apps and videos when a failed installed happen for Flash.
If flash works very slow, you should close unused tabs on your web browser, and programs in your taskbar, and system tray because flash uses a lot of RAM, and CPU cycles which your open applications also uses. Â Also, uninstall programs you rarely use, but run in the background like Media player, and instant messengers since they can also slow down Windows.
You can also upgrade to more RAM, buy a faster video card, and upgrade your CPU for improve system performance which should make flash faster.
Flash also seem to be not as likely to be broken on Ubuntu Linux 10.04 and other operating systems compared to Windows. However, I notice some versions of Ubuntu Linux and other versions of Linux tend to crash when watching flash videos on YouTube videos crash when in full screen mode, so far Ubuntu 10.04 seems to work the best with Flash, and not crash in Full screen mode.
Good luck fixing Adobe flash player on your Windows Web Browsers!
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Fix Problems in Adobe Flash Player
It’s what I always hate about the flash player it always breaks everytime I usually tend to uninstall my flash player or my browser.
I agree Y8, Adobe Flash Player tends to break whenever a new version or released, or if I update to a new browser. Plus, it tends to crash more then other apps like Java based apps on websites. I find uninstalling reinstall Adobe Flash, or emptying out my web browsers temporary internet files to fix flash sometimes. I can’t wait for HTML5 to be more popular, so we don’t need to use Adobe Flash Plug-in to watch videos and play most flash games online. For now, I mostly use FireFox and Google Chrome for visiting flash sites since I notice Internet Explorer 9 sometimes does not handle Flash very well because of errors.
Hey Johnson ,
Nice one, glad I got it right !! I have a decision must still missing when I went through the comments.
Cheers again,
Thanks!!! i like post
Great post! I tell all of my clients that the best and cheapest way to repair anything is to do it yourself! Charles – Thousand Oaks Plumbing
I installed 7.01 for Ubuntu 10.04LTS(lucid) with no joy.
Still the same problem requiring the killing of the running process. I’m back to using a modified script and launcher, but I must say I’m happy with 7.01 in general….Thanks!
I’m using FireFox 8 in Ubuntu 11.10, and it’s been working pretty good on my computer.
Very nice post. I certainly love this website.
Keep writing!