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Firefox says click here to update Shockwave, but that says Shockwave is disabled so you can't click that link. Please provide fix.

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  • Last reply by 4pat

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On the Add-ons Manager page/Plugins entry for Shockwave Flash appears the line "Shockwave Flash is known to be vulnerable and should be updated." This is followed by a link reading "Update Now". When I click this link, Firefox thinks for a while and then brings up a page that says (it's quite long, so this is a summary) Shockwave Flash versions have been disabled, so this page appears when you click on any of its links.

Since "Update Now" doesn't work, please send me an executable file that will fix this. Firefox says it is version 30.0.

On the Add-ons Manager page/Plugins entry for Shockwave Flash appears the line "Shockwave Flash is known to be vulnerable and should be updated." This is followed by a link reading "Update Now". When I click this link, Firefox thinks for a while and then brings up a page that says (it's quite long, so this is a summary) Shockwave Flash versions have been disabled, so this page appears when you click on any of its links. Since "Update Now" doesn't work, please send me an executable file that will fix this. Firefox says it is version 30.0.

Chosen solution

Hi SF11blocked, I understand that you have tried to add Shockwave Flash to Firefox, and are prompted to update, but when you came to the support site and submitted your question alot of text boxes came up and many were submitted. I also understand when you logged into the Adobe Site there were two problems:

The first problem was that there had never been an activation drop-down list for that entry. (Perhaps it had been removed when that plug-in was disabled?) The second problem was that I had deleted the Shockwave entry.

If you deleted the entry from: [about:addons] http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/k.../enabling-flash-player-firefox.html then you uninstalled it. Was it removed when it was disabled? It should not have been.

I would recommend downloading and installing it one more time from the original downloaded file in your download folder. If it is no longer there I would recommend starting over.

Please post back with your results.

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All Replies (20)

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Download the full Flash executable from get.adobe.com/flashplayer

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You can find the latest Flash player versions for Firefox on this page:

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This was slightly helpful. Using that link and clicking to download Flash Player eventually produced a message that there was insufficient disk space. There is plenty of space.

To get around the original problem, I deleted Shockwave from my list of plug ins. That worked fine, but I can't figure out how to add a new plug in.

If I knew how to add a plug in, I would add Adobe Flash Player. Unfortunately there are no instructions on how to do this.

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I don't know why Firefox wants another reply. I've been trying to enter a reply for over three hours. Perhaps Firefox has been storing up several of my attempts and is acknowledging them now.

In any case, using Firefox plug ins would be easier if there were instructions. I REALLY would like to add Flash Player.

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If I knew how to satisfy Firefox's request for replies, I would do it now. Perhaps I should just post empty replies until it is satisfied.

By the way, did I mention that I would like to use the Flash Player plug in? I could if I knew how to tell Firefox to install it.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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This seems to be unending, so I'm just going to exit. Thanks for your patience.

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Everyone on here is a volunteer not a Mozilla employee. Please be patient and also don't keep sending useless replies as it clogs up our email

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Dear Moses:

I apologize for bombarding you with e-mails. This wasn't intentional. I seem to have gotten caught in some sort of inexplicable loop. Let me describe what happened. With this information, perhaps you can tell me how to avoid this problem in the future. Please stick with me though what follows, as it looks like I'm trying for the world's longest help request!

Adobe Flash Player is working well in IE. It tries to keep itself updated, which is a real hassle. At boot time it frequently pops up and insists on downloading its newest version. (There is an unattended option, but it ALWAYS fails because the updater app doesn't know how to interact with dial-up.) I can defer the download if necessary, but if I don't really need the computer today, I can let the update proceed.

I dial in to Earthlink and then click the Flash Player Install button and the Flash Player installation procedure launches. From hard experience, I've learned that the installer doesn't play nicely with others. No other internet operations can be running on my system, or the download always fails. (Sometimes it fails just because some local application, such as a virus checker, is also running.) The only thing that works is to be sure nothing else is running and just to walk away. After a few tries I always get the current Flash Player version downloaded and installed. Knowing that I have the latest version seemed important in what follows.

One major problem I have with Firefox is that it doesn't support Adobe Flash Player. With help from Help (Duh!) and Google search, I found that a plug-in named Shockwave Flash Player had been disabled by Firefox. Fortunately, the entry for this plug-in has a link to download an update. Unfortunately, clicking on this link brings up a page that says, in effect, Sorry, but this plug-in has been disabled. You can't click on that link.

This was a dead end. The link didn't work. Even though I have the latest Flash Player, Firefox wouldn't bite. After lots of research, I was able to delete the disabled Shockwave plug-in, but that didn't help. So I turned to the Adobe web site to see if it had a solution.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but navigating the Adobe web site is quite a challenge. It seems to be mostly concerned with a cloud-centric application. There is a small link to download Flash Player -- which I didn't need to do -- but nothing else. Eventually I found a search function which was somewhat helpful, although nothing it found had links. There were URLs, which had to be copied and pasted into the address bar.

These led to instructions for activating Flash Player in Firefox on Windows. These said to find the Shockwave Flash Player plug-in entry and click on the drop-down list in order to activate it. The first problem was that there had never been an activation drop-down list for that entry. (Perhaps it had been removed when that plug-in was disabled?) The second problem was that I had deleted the Shockwave entry. But problem two seems less important because of problem one.

Since that wasn't helpful, I tried the Customer Service path. That said to ask the volunteer users community, so at last I'm somewhere you will recognize.

In order to ask a new question, I had to join the site with a name, password, etc. I supplied the requested information and the site said I had to reply to an e-mail. So I opened Windows mail and replied. This opened another Firefox tab with a page that said everything was fine now. I had expected that some part of this process would provide some mechanism to ask my question, but there were no links on any of the open Firefox tabs and none of them cycled to another page.

I ate supper, but nothing had changed, so I exited Firefox and restarted it. I had to re-enter my name, password, etc. and reply to a new e-mail. This time, when the dead-end page saying everything worked came up, I exited right away. When I restarted Firefox this time, the Adobe web site allowed me to log in. I eventually navigated to a page where I could ask how to get Flash Player to work in Firefox. That page brought up a text-entry box for my question and a Submit button.

When I clicked Submit, I was a bit surprised by the response. The page scrolled up a bit and displayed a new text-entry box and Submit button below the first. Unsure how best to react, I entered a little more text and clicked Submit. Once again the page scrolled up and displayed a third text- entry box and Submit button. (I began to detect a pattern.) I thought that if I left the box empty, the repetitions would stop. In a sense they did, since when I clicked Submit on the empty box, the page displayed an error message saying at least five characters had to be entered. So I entered five characters in the next few boxes as the page continued to scroll up and present them.

This was getting nowhere, so I finally decided just to exit from Firefox once again. I clicked the red X and the Adobe page immediately presented three or four more text boxes in rapid succession. The same text was in each box. I think it was some variant on what I had just been entering, but it scrolled by so quickly that I'm not really sure.

I'm sorry that I didn't bail sooner, but I kept hoping that something was going to start working.

Do you have any advice about getting Flash Player to work inside Firefox running on Windows?

Sincerely yours, Bob Horton

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Can you send me your troubleshooting information from the Firefox installation that's having issues? This is a good part in troubleshooting.

  • Navigate to about:support via Address Bar
  • Click the button that says Copy text to clipboard
  • Now, go back to your forum post and click inside the reply box. Press Ctrl+V to paste all the information you copied into the forum post.
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Dear Moses:

Thanks for your response. I guess you can tell from my magnum opus above that I'm pretty lost. I appreciate your help.

Here's the text I copied per your instructions:


Application Basics


Name: Firefox Version: 30.0 User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:30.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/30.0

Crash Reports for the Last 3 Days


All Crash Reports

Extensions


Name: Adblock Plus Version: 2.3.2 Enabled: true ID: {d10d0bf8-f5b5-c8b4-a8b2-2b9879e08c5d}

Name: Add to Amazon Wish List Button Version: 1.10 Enabled: true ID: amznUWL2@amazon.com

Name: DownThemAll! Version: 2.0.16 Enabled: true ID: {DDC359D1-844A-42a7-9AA1-88A850A938A8}

Name: Free Download Manager plugin Version: 1.6.0.7 Enabled: true ID: fdm_ffext@freedownloadmanager.org

Name: Garmin Communicator Version: 4.0.4 Enabled: true ID: {195A3098-0BD5-4e90-AE22-BA1C540AFD1E}

Name: WOT Version: 20130515 Enabled: true ID: {a0d7ccb3-214d-498b-b4aa-0e8fda9a7bf7}

Name: Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant Version: 1.2.1 Enabled: false ID: {20a82645-c095-46ed-80e3-08825760534b}

Important Modified Preferences


accessibility.blockautorefresh: true accessibility.typeaheadfind.flashBar: 0 browser.cache.disk.capacity: 25600 browser.cache.disk.smart_size.enabled: false browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false browser.display.background_color: #C0C0C0 browser.display.use_system_colors: true browser.history_expire_days_min: 35 browser.history_expire_days.mirror: 180 browser.places.importBookmarksHTML: false browser.places.importDefaults: false browser.places.leftPaneFolderId: -1 browser.places.migratePostDataAnnotations: false browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion: 7 browser.places.updateRecentTagsUri: false browser.sessionstore.upgradeBackup.latestBuildID: 20140605174243 browser.startup.homepage: about:blank browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID: 20140605174243 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone: 30.0 dom.mozApps.used: true dom.w3c_touch_events.expose: false extensions.lastAppVersion: 30.0 general.useragent.extra.microsoftdotnet: ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C) gfx.direct3d.checkDX10: false keyword.URL: http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= network.cookie.cookieBehavior: 1 network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true places.database.lastMaintenance: 1405557060 places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 18298 places.history.expiration.transient_optimal_database_size: 103104266 places.last_vacuum: 1296013432 plugin.disable_full_page_plugin_for_types: application/pdf plugin.importedState: true plugin.state.flash: 0 privacy.clearOnShutdown.cookies: false privacy.clearOnShutdown.downloads: false privacy.clearOnShutdown.history: false privacy.cpd.cache: false privacy.cpd.cookies: false privacy.cpd.sessions: false privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs: true privacy.sanitize.sanitizeOnShutdown: true privacy.sanitize.timeSpan: 0 security.warn_viewing_mixed.show_once: false storage.vacuum.last.index: 1 storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite: 1404482966

Graphics


Adapter Description: Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset Adapter Drivers: igdumdx32 igd10umd32 Adapter RAM: Unknown Device ID: 0x2e22 DirectWrite Enabled: false (7.0.6002.23200) Driver Date: 2-11-2011 Driver Version: 8.15.10.2302 GPU #2 Active: false GPU Accelerated Windows: 1/1 Direct3D 9 Vendor ID: 0x8086 WebGL Renderer: Google Inc. -- ANGLE (Intel(R) G45/G43 Express Chipset Direct3D9Ex vs_3_0 ps_3_0) windowLayerManagerRemote: false AzureCanvasBackend: skia AzureContentBackend: cairo AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo AzureSkiaAccelerated: 0

JavaScript


Incremental GC: true

Accessibility


Activated: false Prevent Accessibility: 0

Library Versions


NSPR Expected minimum version: 4.10.6 Version in use: 4.10.6

NSS Expected minimum version: 3.16 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.16 Basic ECC

NSSSMIME Expected minimum version: 3.16 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.16 Basic ECC

NSSSSL Expected minimum version: 3.16 Basic ECC Version in use: 3.16 Basic ECC

NSSUTIL Expected minimum version: 3.16 Version in use: 3.16


There certainly is a lot of information there. I hope it helps.

Thanks again!

Bob

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Chosen Solution

Hi SF11blocked, I understand that you have tried to add Shockwave Flash to Firefox, and are prompted to update, but when you came to the support site and submitted your question alot of text boxes came up and many were submitted. I also understand when you logged into the Adobe Site there were two problems:

The first problem was that there had never been an activation drop-down list for that entry. (Perhaps it had been removed when that plug-in was disabled?) The second problem was that I had deleted the Shockwave entry.

If you deleted the entry from: [about:addons] http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/k.../enabling-flash-player-firefox.html then you uninstalled it. Was it removed when it was disabled? It should not have been.

I would recommend downloading and installing it one more time from the original downloaded file in your download folder. If it is no longer there I would recommend starting over.

Please post back with your results.

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Dear guigs2:

I shall try to be briefer than before. After all, details are more critical for analyzing problems than for a post mortem of success.

In short, you said to do everything again. I had two copies of the link to install Flash Player for Firefox. Running the first one started the download which quickly stopped with the message Not Enough Disk Space. I checked, and there was "only" 1 gb. So I deleted some files to get this up to 1.38 gb and tried the other link. Still not enough space.

So I tried the Help pages that were suggested. There was nothing there about disk space, but I read everything until I found a link to a "direct" download of the installer. It took 2.5 hours to download. I executed it and it ran for a while. (It made me close Firefox.) Then it displayed that familiar large prompt box that says in effect that I should allow automatic updates. Since they NEVER work, I said to notify me instead, and the installer exited.

I don't know how to test it, but I brought up Firefox and looked at the plug-ins. The Shockwave entry is there with a drop-down list. I set that to Always Activate. My best guess is that everything is OK now.

(I doubt that this part is relevant. I include it to prove I'm gullible. Firefox had a link that said I should check that my plug-ins were up to date. I clicked it, which brought up a Firefox page that said you did good and displayed one of those little rotating circles. Nothing else changed, so I looked at the Earthlink status, which showed that there were some transmissions. I left it running over night, but other than more transmissions, nothing had changed after 8 or 9 hours, so I exited Firefox.)

Sincerely, Bob Horton

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