Flash - sorting out a mess....

[kennysarmy]

We have a bit of a mess when it comes to our flash deployment...and I'd like to get it tidied up and am looking for some advice.

 

We have some machines which I think in the past may have had flash installed manually.

We have some machines using a live MSI and I belive some machines that have had flash installed by an MSI that might now not longer exist.

 

Am I right in thinking the only way to tidy this mess up is to visit each PC and run the Adobe flash un-installer and then create a fresh MSI and deploy out?

 

I'm concerned as we've just tried the uninstaller utility and it hung the PC to the point where we had to re-ghost it.

 

I've also tried creating a new MSI with the latest version and that also hung some pc's as they were installing/booting up....

 

Any advice appreciated....

[Avalon]

having very similar issues here. tried rolling out the uninstall utility but hung as well ...

 

ideally would like a way of removing flash from every machine regardless of what version and how it was isntalled and then rollout the latest release

[kennysarmy]

glad (well you know what I mean) that I'm not the only one...

 

hopefully someone can offer some guidance...assistance...

 

[sandeep2504]

we removed flash by running two batch files.

 

one to copy the flash uninstaller to the computers.

 

the other to run the flash unistaller remotely.

 

this was done using psexec, vbs script and batch files.

 

Would you be interested?

 

I would be happy to email them to you if you want to PM me.

[p858snake]

I'm concerned as we've just tried the uninstaller utility and it hung the PC to the point where we had to re-ghost it.

 

Perhaps just re-image all your machines to one standard, then sort out flash there? For example you could do it with it installed in the image or have the image without it then send it out via GP to all your machines.

Edited February 12, 2010 by p858snake

[EvLPhenom]

We had a similar problem to this last year, but i recreated our ghost images with a standard MSI for flash and shockwave and then when it needs updating i can use the uninstaller app and then send out a new MSI, seems to be working well here altough you need to spend some time on creating and deploying new images.

[Michael]

Unless you're still running Flash from the Macromedia days, updating Adobe Flash to the latest version 10 using an MSI should be absolutely fine. I've never seen machines freeze because Flash was installed.

 

The probability is it isn't just Flash which is out of date, but lots of other components or picky software with specific requirements. I'd probably be tempted to create new images. It creates a little work, but it would certainly pay off longterm.

[Mr.Ben]

The flash uninstaller has an unattended switch (or at least used to!)

 

i think it was /s

[kennysarmy]

what's the problem in running the uninstaller and then just letting the students login allow the setup of flash....

 

?

[PiqueABoo]

For quite a while now the Flash Player ActiveX installer **has been running the uninstaller for you** and apparently doing other bits to clean up after previous versions. Take a look at the contents of:

 

%windir%\system32\Macromed\Flash\install.log

[kennysarmy]

For quite a while now the Flash Player ActiveX installer **has been running the uninstaller for you** and apparently doing other bits to clean up after previous versions. Take a look at the contents of:

 

%windir%\system32\Macromed\Flash\install.log

 

So I am thinking this might work...

 

1. Create a policy to install the latest MSI for flash active X

 

2. Run the uninstaller manually on all Pc's in a GPO

 

3. Roll out the policy to the GPO and test.

 

 

Repeat for all other GPO's one by one.

 

If a flash update comes out I would then.

 

1. Remove the old policy

 

2. Create and deploy out a new policy

 

 

BUT would you recommend using the option to remove the software as it falls out the scope of the policy or let the new MSI installer do the uninstall bit?

 

Cheers.