Dealing with Flash Problems

I have several programs that I use with my business that helps to create various flash objects. A couple months ago I began experiencing problems with one of my programs, Macromedia FlashPaper.

It first started when my browser told me that a new version of flash was available. Like a good robot, I updated without question. Shortly after, I found that my FlashPaper would try to reinstall itself whenever I right clicked on other programs (unrelated to FlashPaper). I found this to be very frustrating.

After checking for viruses, spyware, or adware, I went to Adobe for support. The first time I called in, I was told that they don’t do phone support for FlashPaper… but since it involved Flash; he would see what he could do. He had me uninstall FlashPaper and then he had me navigate on my computer to C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\ where we located my flash.ocx file. I then changed this file to flash-old.ocx and reinstalled FlashPaper.

Well, that worked for a while. The latest episode was the reason for my blog entry.

This time, Flash Objects weren’t showing up in my Microsoft IE. Any product that used IE to view web pages wouldn’t show them either. Odd… Firefox still showed these objects. (Yeah Firefox!)

I figured that both the IE problem and the FlashPaper reinstalling itself were related. So, instead of calling Adobe, (I knew they wouldn’t help me on the phone), I “googled” the error message I was getting whenever FlashPaper would try to reinstall itself.

Error 1904.Module
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx
failed to register. HRESULT -2147220473. Contact
your support personnel.

I found some very interesting articles that I felt would be useful to anyone who “googled” the same error message and needed to see a more current report. It is frustrating to search for fixes only to find they are two years old.

Make sure you read these thoroughly before doing any work on your computer; otherwise you’ll be doing it twice.

• Error 1904: flash.ocx failed to register (Flash Player, Flash Paper) - This article is the main article that was directly related to the problem I had with FlashPaper. This last time that I came to this problem, it didn’t work like before, probably because it had the IE problem too.

• Troubleshoot Adobe Flash Player installation for Windows. This article explains how to uninstall Flash.

• Flash Player Support FAQ

• Download SubInACL from Microsoft to fix permission issues that prevent the Flash Player installation

• How to uninstall the Adobe Flash Player plug-in and ActiveX control

All of these articles are linked to each other.

With the help of these articles, I was able to completely clear out Flash. Add/Remove Programs in your control panel does not do this completely. Once it was removed completely I was able to reinstall Flash and ActiveX successfully.

Now, I have not reinstalled FlashPaper… Wonder if I should?

More later…

Heidi

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