After my last blog, about recent updates to the Flash Player, a reader was nice enough to pass along a tip that I am now passing along to you.
If you see (2 files) right after Adobe Flash Player, you are loading two versions of Flash Player in Chrome at the same time. Click on the Details link at the top right corner which will expand Adobe Flash Player and will display details about the two installed versions of Flash Player. My Flash videos just aren’t working right in Google Chrome. How do I fix it? Flash is an application made by Adobe that displays movies, games, or other content within a web browser. It’s an old web standard that’s slowly being phased out by HTML5 — however, many websites still use Flash plugins for videos, games, and tools. Download free Adobe Flash Player software for your Windows, Mac OS, and Unix-based devices to enjoy stunning audio/video playback, and exciting gameplay. Some websites might use Adobe Flash Player to harm your computer. If you quit Chrome, your Flash settings won’t be saved. The next time you open Chrome, you’ll have to allow Flash again for any sites you added before. When you visit a page you trust that has Flash content, click Click to enable Adobe Flash Player. The site needs Flash to work. If a website isn’t working, you might need to change your settings to allow Flash.
I track updates to the Flash Player on my FlashTester.org site, and a number of times Chrome has been late installing an update. The browser would report that it was up to date, yet Flash would be a release behind. My last blog mentioned the helplessness of Chrome users to force an update to Flash. It turns out, we are not helpless.
In addition to the standard, well-known mechanism, shown below, for updating Chrome (hamburger menu -> Help -> About Google Chrome), Google has a second system that they sometimes use for Flash.
Chrome, like all browsers, is a large complex package. On the Windows 7 computer that I normally use, the
folder is currently 390 megabytes and contains 88 files. Buy adobe flash player for mac not working. In addition, Chrome stores files in
Many of the files in this second location are the browser cache, but, even ignoring the cache, Chrome has 3,768 files here consuming 239 megabytes.
Rather than do a full refresh for a small change, Google's second update system does small updates for small changes. The parts of Chrome that can be individually updated are called components and the Flash Player, embedded in Chrome, is one of these components.
Adobe Flash Player For Mac
Google mentions this in an article targeted at IT administrators called Manage Chrome updates on Windows. It makes a good first impression. The article says that the 'Chrome Component Updater allows the Chrome engineering team to release small updates to parts of Chrome on a very rapid schedule.' Compared to the full browser update, the article notes that the Component Updater uses a small amount of bandwidth and only runs when the browser itself is running.
The downside, for me at least, has been that there was no interface to the Chrome Component Updater.
The tip that I received (thanks Michael) was that there is, in fact, an interface to it, and, that the Component Updater can be used to update Flash.
The interface is a URL, chrome://components
The number of Chrome components varies by operating system. The screen shot above, taken on Windows 10, indicates there are nine, only the first five are shown. There are six components on OS X 10.10, eight on Windows 7, nine on Windows 8.1 and two on Chrome OS 49.
The Flash Player is identified as 'pepper_flash'. Simply click the gray 'Check for update' button and the Chrome Component Updater will not only check for updates, it will also download and install an available update.
The 'Component updated' message in the screen shot above is the result of upgrading Flash from version 21.0.0.213 to 21.0.0.216. If there is no available update, the button click response is 'Component not updated'. If your computer is slow and/or the component is large, you may briefly see a 'component downloading' message too.
In my tests, the Chrome Component Updater worked consistently across Windows, OS X and Chrome OS. The only downside is that on Chrome OS (tested on version 49) Flash is not an available component.
So, there is no excuse for Windows and Mac users to run Chrome with an old version of Flash. Good thing too, considering how buggy it has been over the years.
Have you ever encountered this problem? You’re working online using Google Chrome, when suddenly a page that you need pops up an error message saying the (Flash) plugin cannot be loaded. Or worse still, your Flash player crashes. Do you look for another page? That may work in the short term, but you may still have the underlying problem with the plugin. It can come back to inconvenience you again. Instead, it’s better to resolve plugin errors now.
Plugins help render web pages or provide specific functionalities on the page. For example, the Flash plugin helps load web pages with videos or other flash content. When Flash is not working correctly, there are a bunch of problems you can encounter.
Flash may be declining in popularity, but if you need it and it’s not working, here are some steps you can take to resolve plugin errors with Chrome in Windows 10. If one of these fixes doesn’t work, move on and try the next.
Rename pepflashplayer.dll
The file “pepflashplayer.dll” can sometimes cause a problem with Flash content. The first step you should try in resolving the issue is to rename this file.
How Do You Set Up Adobe Flash Player
1. Find the file by first accessing the run dialog by pressing Win + R.
2. In that box type %localappdata% and press Enter. This will take you to “appdata -> local.”
4. Inside that numbered folder, locate “pepflashplayer.dll,” and rename it to “pepflashplayerX.dll.”
5. Exit the browser, then reopen it and try to load the page again.
How To Set Up Adobe Flash Player On Chrome
If this solution doesn’t work, try this next solution.
Use Command Prompt
Sometimes corrupt files on a Windows 10 computer can cause errors in plugins. To fix these errors, use the command prompt to enter two commands which will scan the system and repair any corrupt files.
1. Press Win + X or right-click on the Windows button in the bottom-left corner.
2. Choose Command Prompt (admin) from the list of options.
3. When Command Prompt opens, type sfc /scannow and then Enter.
4. The computer will run a scan and fix any corrupted files.
2. Open the folder containing PepperFlash found in step one.
3. Right-click on the folder and delete it.
4. Open the page again to see if the issue is resolved.
Since Flash is not as prevalent as it once was, Chrome has severely limited your options in the settings for dealing with issues. There is no longer an easy way to allow the plugin to run all the time, which would have once solved the problem. If you still need Flash to run, give the three tricks listed above a chance.