Flash won't run for standard users?

[reggiep]

I am still coming to terms with my new vanilla network (Post CC3) and I have noticed that some websites will not run flash even though it is installed. I can run the site no problem logged on as an admin but not as a standard user.

 

eg. http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/flash/unmuddle_the_meals_intro.swf

 

will run fine for me but a standard user just gets a blank page.

 

Do I need to give users permissions to certain parts of the c: drive maybe?

 

thanks

[alexsanger]

Hi there,

 

Any response to this would be appreciated - we're currently looking for a fix for this too. Seems Admins and staff are fine, but student users get a blank screen where the flash object should be. Gave a test student user Domain Admin permissions, and still got a blank screen. Using Mandatory profiles for students, roaming for staff (with redirected Desktop). All XP Pro SP3, IE8, FP10.

 

Tried uninstalling and reinstalling Flashplayer, and overwriting the mandatory profile with a "known good" profile. No joy.

 

Will update if we get anywhere. In the meantime, any wisdom will be gratefully recieved.

 

Alex.

[bossman]

May be wrong here but we have a flashplayer trust msi which is deployed to all workstations and we have never had this problem. We are CC3 though

[DMcCoy]

Have you loaded a page with flash content before creating the mandatory profile?

[alexsanger]

Hi Bossman,

 

Yeah, we're vanilla, so deployed using the .msi direct from Adobe a little while ago. It looks like only some Flash content isn't working - BBC Bitesize in particular. Other things seem to behave, so we may be going down a different avenue...

 

CC3? You have my sympathy...

[alexsanger]

Hi DMcCoy,

 

Got the same error. Over wrote the profile with that of a user that didn't experience the problems, but got exactly the same behaviour. Will set up a test and double check though...

 

Anyone know of any profile permissions or profile folders that FP10 uses? I saw a thread on an Adobe support forum last week suggesting a problem with redirected desktop folders, but the desktop folder is left in its default location in our mandatory profile, so that seemed unlikely. Our staff have redirected desktops, and they are fine.

 

My head's getting sore from all this scratching...

[bossman]

CC3? You have my sympathy...

 

Why? everything just fine and dandy and has been for nearly 8 years no problems

 

We do use the vanilla side of it from time to time but hey, each to their own.

[elsiegee40]

This kind of problem is not uncommon with mandatory profiles.. I've had this sort of thing happen with flash, but more usually shockwave.

 

Take a look at this thread: http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/18661-creating-small-mandatory-profile.html

 

where I have posted about using the flash, etc before making the profile mandatort. Hopefully this will solve your problem.

[sparkeh]

I have had this problem randomly with successive versions of flash (on CC3 and vanilla ). For me, this issue always occurs after a rebuild and a fresh install of flash. Works fine with a admin login but fails with a standard login.

 

Never actually found a fix for it besides manually uninstalling on the station and then reallocating (via GPO or RMMC depending on flavour of network). The only thing I have found consistent is the effected stations seemed to have two flash packages installed (the right package and a weird unversioned package in add/remove programs) whereas the good machines didn't. Can't for the life of me work it out but assume is something to do with a borked install.

[OutToLunch]

I am still coming to terms with my new vanilla network (Post CC3) and I have noticed that some websites will not run flash even though it is installed. I can run the site no problem logged on as an admin but not as a standard user.

 

eg. http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/flash/unmuddle_the_meals_intro.swf

 

will run fine for me but a standard user just gets a blank page.

 

Do I need to give users permissions to certain parts of the c: drive maybe?

 

thanks

 

When you say blank page, do you mean Flash player doesn't run at all? We had a similar issue but when you right clicked in the area where the flash should be you got a flash player context menu not an IE one - text was something along the lines of "Movie not loaded". Couldn't get this resolved at all with Flash 9 and ended up telling everyone to use Firefox instead. We've recently found that Flash 10 appears to work fine for standard users in IE if we go to the setup web page and download the standalone .exe installer instead - when you watch the install, it has a short section about cleaning up old installs, not sure if this is what fixes it..

[Bezwick]

We had a problem similar to this a while ago and i made this script to fix it. This assumes you are using the latest flash version.

For some reason the installation doesnt modify the users registry settings so i added this script to the users login and it sorted it out.

 

check thoses settings and see if this works.

 

 

'Script to fix Flash plugin problem

Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell") 
On error Resume Next

WSHShell.RegWrite "HKCR\CLSID\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\ToolboxBitmap32\","C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10c.ocx"
WSHShell.RegWrite "HKCR\CLSID\{1171A62F-05D2-11D1-83FC-00A0C9089C5A}\InprocServer32\","C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10c.ocx"
WSHShell.RegWrite "HKCR\CLSID\{D27CDB70-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\InprocServer32\","C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10c.ocx"
WSHShell.RegWrite "HKCR\CLSID\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\ToolboxBitmap32\","C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10c.ocx"
WSHShell.RegWrite "HKCR\CLSID\{D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000}\InprocServer32\","C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10c.ocx"

 

Good luck

Edited October 6, 2009 by ZeroHour

[spc-rocket]

Hi Guys,

 

On an affected workstation do the following.

 

1) Login as an administrator and goto Start | Run

2) Type in regedit in the run box and press enter.

 

3) In the registry editor navigate to the following location:

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl

 

Now Create a key under the FeatureCopntrol key called

 

FEATURE_BLOCK_LMZ_SCRIPT

 

4) Now click on the newly created key and on the right hand side click new item and name it iexplore.exe

 

as a DWORD entry.

 

5) The value box for the new item should be all zeros.

 

6) Now login to a site and test as a normal user the flash site that is now working.

 

If the above works then you can deploy the reg fragment onto the usertype if you're on CC3 or by editing a GPO onn vanilla.

 

HTH,

 

Ash.

[alexsanger]

Thanks guys for the script and reg key info. Tried 'em both and no joy.

 

Looks like some content works fine, and some doesn't - in particular the science section of bitesize is causing problems.

 

Will keep looking down the profile/permissions route and see what we come up with. Reckon we'll rebuild the mandatory profile (irritating, cos its been fine for over two years...) and try everything on a PC with a clean FP10 install and take it from there.

 

Will post the solution, as long as it doesn't turn out to be too embarrasing

 

Thanks for the posts anyway - hope others had more luck.

[Newton]

I had something similar the other week,

Flash worked on the site when logged in as administrator but not as a normal user (not a .man or roming profile),

 

ended up adding the site to Trusted sites list and that fixed it,

[kearton]

I've got the same problem with Shockwave

[elsiegee40]

Thanks guys for the script and reg key info. Tried 'em both and no joy.

 

Looks like some content works fine, and some doesn't - in particular the science section of bitesize is causing problems.

 

Will keep looking down the profile/permissions route and see what we come up with. Reckon we'll rebuild the mandatory profile (irritating, cos its been fine for over two years...) and try everything on a PC with a clean FP10 install and take it from there.

 

Will post the solution, as long as it doesn't turn out to be too embarrasing

 

Thanks for the posts anyway - hope others had more luck.

 

I had something similar the other week,

Flash worked on the site when logged in as administrator but not as a normal user (not a .man or roming profile),

 

ended up adding the site to Trusted sites list and that fixed it,

 

I've got the same problem with Shockwave

 

I refer you all to my earlier post on this thread and link (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/windows/18661-creating-small-mandatory-profile.html).

 

Make a mandatory profile user a member of the administrators group on a temporary basis, make the mandatory profile not mandatory. The step by step is in the link.

 

Use:

BBC Science Clips (Flash) BBC - Schools Science Clips - Sorting and using materials

Little Fingers Games (Shockwave) Flower - better than Little Animals mentioned on that thread.

 

Logoff, make the profile mandatory and remove admin from the user

 

This is what I do to sort this out. Regrettably, it seems to be necessary every time I upgrade flash or shockwave.

[round2it]

dont know if this will help

 

im asuming you are using mandator profiles for pupils

 

i had an issue like this and it was down to security settings that are stored in a file called settings.sol stored in the application data folder macromedia \support \flashplayer \sys \of the mandatory profile. it is buried deep in ther somewhere

 

look through the settings and see if anything jumps out at you security wise

 

you edit the settings from this website

Adobe - Flash Player : Settings Manager - Global Security Settings panel

 

its a long shot but you might want to try it.

[round2it]

have a look at this

 

Problems running Flash Player 8.0.24.0 ActiveX control after installation when logged in as Restricted User on Windows

[Mr.Ben]

I had similar problems when installing 3rd Party Software which decided in all it's glory to install a beta version of Flash 9 on top of my v9 installation. The two didn't still well together at all, some websites worked but others didn't - Of course it was only the important ones that didn't.

 

More recently I've had the problem when upgrading from 9 to 10 and between 10 versions.

 

In each case different websites didn't work, but I did find an all emcompassing solution:

 

 

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

 

The Flash Uninstaller. Cleans up and removes all versions of Flash (It's updated periodically too). It has silent switches, so it can be run in the background if needed or launched from a script.

 

I then just used GPO to plop Flash 9/10 back onto the PC's and voila!

[alexsanger]

Oh dear oh dear,

 

After checking everything, verifying our profile was fine, checking and double checking permissions, uninstalling and reinstalling flash, and basically chasing my tail for 24 hours, I decided to have a look at the source for the pages that weren't working. I find some unusuall URLs in the calls in the source code, so check those against the students web filtering, and guess what - the sub-domain URLs are blocked. Marvellous.

 

Unblocked the URLs and all of the problematic Bitesize flash that wouldn't play suddenly springs into life. In case anyone's interested, it was BBC - Homepage...

 

In a way I'm glad it proves that a) our network setup and maintenance is sound, and b) apparently the webfilter is recieveing its updates!

 

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions - apologies for wasting anyone's time.

 

I'll get me' coat

 

[elsiegee40]

Oh dear oh dear,

 

After checking everything, verifying our profile was fine, checking and double checking permissions, uninstalling and reinstalling flash, and basically chasing my tail for 24 hours, I decided to have a look at the source for the pages that weren't working. I find some unusuall URLs in the calls in the source code, so check those against the students web filtering, and guess what - the sub-domain URLs are blocked. Marvellous.

 

Unblocked the URLs and all of the problematic Bitesize flash that wouldn't play suddenly springs into life. In case anyone's interested, it was BBC - Homepage...

 

In a way I'm glad it proves that a) our network setup and maintenance is sound, and b) apparently the webfilter is recieveing its updates!

 

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions - apologies for wasting anyone's time.

 

I'll get me' coat

 

 

Poor you... I'm glad it's fixed. It's gutting when you've had to spend so much time on it.