Uninstalling/Downgrading Flash Player
March 31, 2009
As testers, we often need to test web apps with different versions of flash player.. And whoever has ever tried to do that, never got it right in first attempt.. Talk about Usability 
Documentation and Downloadable links can be found at
Uninstall Flash Player
Flash Player Older Versions
Now here’s the catch, if you were using latest Flash Player 10 ActiveX control (basically FP 10 on IE), you won’t be able to install previous 10 version even after using this uninstaller.. Reason being, there are lot many apps using flash files – browsers, IMs.. So it never gets uninstalled properly. Solution is quite simple.
1. Copy Flash uninstaller to your hard drive
2. Open Command Prompt
3. Navigate to the location where you have this uninstaller
4. Type uninstall_flash_player.exe /clean
5. Press Enter
6. Flash player uninstaller will launch. Simply continue.
7. Do click on details once uninstall is complete.
8. If it says Delete on Boot. Restart your system.
That’s it.. your system is free for any other versions to be installed
Entry Filed under: Geek Stuff. Tags: Flash, Flash Player, FP10, Uninstall.
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1.
freakqnc | June 30, 2009 at 10:14 am
Much love and tanks man!
I was ready to bang my head against the wall, but then I found this page and solved the problem… Isn’t it funny that Adobe did not give a damn about placing these instruction in their uninstaller page (http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/141/tn_14157.html)? How/where did you find out how to do it via command line?
I guess it would be too much to ask them to place a &^%*ing check box in the installer to trigger the “/clean” option without having to resort to the command line!
I really hate the way adobe “hides” the link to older players on their website, it should be a damn well visible link in the installer download page… at least as visible as the link to get the player for different systems.
Thanks again! And keep up the good work!
Best!
PS: I love the header statement: “Reality Sucks! I’m Going to Keep On Dreamin……..”
2.
Another Dreamer | July 14, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Glad I was able to help
3.
Eric Wilde | April 3, 2009 at 2:20 am
Going from 10 to 9 should fail as well, at least according to the FP team.
4.
Another Dreamer | April 4, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Not if u use their own uninstallers..
And why would they want that.. user should be free to install whichever version they want
5.
Eric Wilde | April 2, 2009 at 5:52 am
This is actually by design and has cost us many customer service calls.
It is a security violation if you allow the user to install a previous version of the flash player after having installed a later version. Because of this we saw many install failures of the Creative Suite 3. We fixed most of the problems for the Creative Suite installer around flash player install issues; but, not all. This one we worked around in a couple of ways to make it far more likely to succeed installing CS even when the flash player fails to install.
I’ve argued with the security team and the flash player team about the very low severity of the security flaw and the need to remove this block; but, they refuse to budge. At this time it isn’t worth my effort to continue fighting since our workaround address the majority of the issues. Lately, Creative Suite 4 installation failures due to flash player install problems is way down. The few that do come up are caused by actual bugs in the flash player installer rather than whacked designed behavior.
6.
Another Dreamer | April 2, 2009 at 2:03 pm
actually there’s no problem if you back to 9 from 10.. but try going to 10.0.12 from 10.0.22.. aargh.. and you do need to at times.. esp developers and testers.. Without the clean option you can never do that. And You can’t find it anywhere in official docs.. there’s uninstaller.. there are old builds.. but no side note.. if uninstaller doesn’t work, use clean command.. very irritating.. took me few restarts and lotsa googling to figure it out.. so had to blog it.