Thursday, February 28, 2008

Firefox: Flash Player Won't Play (and how to fix it)

Recently I had an issue with the Flash Player stopped working within Firefox. For example, if I went to YouTube the video would start for a few seconds then stop. I tried a few things to fix the problem, but only one of them worked.

Ultimately what I had to do, was quit all the browsers and uninstall the Flash plug-in. To uninstall the Flash player, follow the instructions below:
  • First, go to Adobe's site and download the Flash Player to your desktop.
  • The quit all your browsers, both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
  • Then open the Control Panels under the Start menu, and select 'Programs and Features'. Towards the top, there is an entry for the 'Adobe Flash Player Plugin'. Just double-clicked it to remove it.
Before you restart any of your browsers, run the Flash Player on your desktop.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Firefox wasn't displaying flash after install. I used the fix decribed above and it worked. Both IE and Firefox are fine now; I have flash on both. Thanks!:)

Anonymous said...

I dont have "Programs and Features" in my control panel. Odd.

Anonymous said...

"Programs and Features" is for VISTA OS only. For XP it would be Add and Remove Programs

Anonymous said...

Hi, my firefox doesnt work when it comes to a flash player, I followed the procedure given above but still no luck. I have a flash player of version 10.0.12.36 installed. Somebody please help

_Mahesh.

ubergeek316 said...

I had given up watching Flash videos in Firefox because it was so unreliable. The latest version of Flash, which you have currently is working for me.

The best advice I can give you, its a little extreme is uninstall Flash and Firefox, then reinstall them. Or just use I.E. to watch flash videos from sites like YouTube.com.

Anonymous said...

it worked a treat...thanks!

John said...

If the a fore mentioned trick doesn't work, often times after closing firefox a core process will continue running. I imagine that could interfere with Installing flash player too. I think, though, Adobe has to be number 1 of major software publishers to have so consistent / persistent software installation problems. I guess you could include HP which would probably just as bad or worse.

Anonymous said...

I have a windows vista and have been using firefox. For some reason, whenever I go to watch vids on youtube it always tells me to update to the newest browser and says I need to install adobe flash player when I go to watch a vid. I have tried reinstalling firefox and adobe flash player but nothing works. I've gone to my options and found that nothing was blocking it. I've shut down my firewall and have turned off my norton and still nothing. And when I go to download the adobe flash player, the information bar never shows! I am desperate - please help.