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 Windows OS Hub / Windows 10 / Preparing Windows for Adobe Flash End of Life on December 31, 2020

January 22, 2021 Windows 10Windows Server 2016

Preparing Windows for Adobe Flash End of Life on December 31, 2020

On December 31, 2020, Adobe finally ended support for the Flash Player. From this point on, Flash has reached the end of its lifecycle (end-of-life, EOL), new versions or updates will no longer be released. In this article, we’ll explain what a Windows administrator needs to know about the end of support for Flash Player.

Since 2017, Adobe has been advising all developers to migrate their existing Flash projects to HTML5, WebGL, and WebAssembly open formats. The transition period ends later this year, and on December 31, Adobe will remove the Flash Player download page from its site.

To check if Flash Player is installed on your computer/browser, go to the check page https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html

flash player is not installed on windows 10

By the end of 2020, Microsoft will block Flash in Edge and IE for all versions of Windows. The Firefox and Chrome developers will also disable Flash Player support in recent versions.

Contents:
  • KB4577586: Update for the Removing Adobe Flash Player on Windows
  • Uninstall Adobe Flash Player in Older version of Windows
  • Disable Flash Player in Windows via WSUS
  • How to Use Adobe Flash Player After 12 Jan 2021?

KB4577586: Update for the Removing Adobe Flash Player on Windows

In October 2020, Microsoft released KB4577586 to remove embedded Adobe Flash from supported Windows versions (Windows 8/8.1/10 and Windows Server 2012/2012R2/2016/2019).

  • The KB4577586 update only removes the Adobe Flash Player built into Windows 10 (and other current Windows versions). If you manually download and install Flash Player from Adobe site or another source, it won’t be removed;
  • You cannot uninstall update KB4577586 after installation. This means that you can no longer install Adobe Flash Player on your Windows device (in order to use Flash again, you will have to rollback to a restore point, reset or reinstall your Windows).

Update KB4577586 (Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player) is currently only available for manual download from Microsoft’s Update Catalog.

Download KB4577586 (Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player) from Microsoft Update Catalog

To install the update, just run the downloaded file windows10.0-kb4577586-x64.msu.

installing update kb4577586 via standalone installer

To install the update from the MSU file silently, you can use the command::

wusa.exe C:\updates\windows10.0-kb4577586-x64.msu /quiet /norestart

Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player on Windows 10

If you try to uninstall the Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player that disables Flash support on Windows 10, you will receive an error:

wusa.exe /uninstall /kb:4577586

Windows Update Standalone Installer
Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player is required by your computer and cannot be uninstalled.

Update for Removal of Adobe Flash Player is required by your computer and cannot be uninstalled

Uninstall Adobe Flash Player in Older version of Windows

In order to uninstall Flash Player in legacy Windows versions (Windows 7/XP and Windows Server 2008R2/ 2003), in which Flash is not built into the OS image, you need to use a special Uninstaller from Adobe. You can download it here https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/support/uninstall_flash_player.exe.

Close browsers and other applications that might be using Flash and run the downloaded file uninstall_flash_player.exe

You can uninstall Flash using the uninstall_flash_player tool from the command prompt in quiet mode:

uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall

or to uninstall a specific Flash extension (ActiveX, NPAPI, PPAPI):

  • uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall activex
  • uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall plugin
  • uninstall_flash_player.exe -uninstall pepperplugin

It remains to manually delete all the remaining Flash files from the following folders:

C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash
C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash
%appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player
%appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player

Check https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html for instructions on disabling Flash Player in various browsers.

Disable Flash Player in Windows via WSUS

Update KB4577586 is currently optional in Windows Update and WSUS. Most likely in early 2021 Microsoft will make it recommended or even mandatory.

We remind you again that the update KB4577586 cannot be removed after installation.

The KB4577586 update can be manually imported into WSUS

If the Failed error appears when importing an update, you must enable TLS 1.2 strong encryption support for .Net Framework 4 version on the WSUS server. To do this, create the DWORD (32-bit) parameter named SchUseStrongCrypto and value 1 under the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\.NETFramework\v4.0.30319. To apply the new settings, you need to restart your computer.

failed to import update KB4577586 to WSUS server

After importing the update to WSUS, you can approve it for installation on the target group of computers/servers (target groups can be created manually in WSUS console or configured via GPO) .

How to Use Adobe Flash Player After 12 Jan 2021?

At the end of December 2020, Adobe officially ended support for Falsh Player. From January 12, 2021, Flash Player forcibly blocks the playback of any swf content in all browsers and displays the following message:

Adobe Flash Player is out of date.

flash player blocked out of date from 12 jan 2021

When you try to update the plugin, or click on the picture in the Flash Player window, you will be redirected to the Adobe page with the Flash End of life description.

As a result, the administrator, for example, won’t be able to access the web management interface of VMWare vSphere older versions (up to 6.7), Horizon (up to 7.8), Cloud Director (up to 10.0) based on Flash.

Due to the high volume of requests from corporate customers, there is a small workaround that allows you to temporarily enable Flash content to play on specific sites.

Create a text file mms.cfg with the following configuration:

EnableAllowList=1
AllowListRootMovieOnly=1
AllowListUrlPattern=https://vca.woshub.com:443
AllowListUrlPattern = *://site1.woshub.com/AllowListUrlPattern = https://*.woshub.com/
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0
AutoUpdateDisable=1
EOLUninstallDisable=1

You need to specify in the AllowListUrlPattern parameter the URLs of all websites for which you want to temporarily allow playing Flash content.

This list should include mostly internal Flash resources that have not yet been migrated to alternative technologies.

The mms.cfg file must be copied to domain computers using Group Policiy, logon scripts, SCCM, etc. The table below shows the paths where you need to copy the mms.cfg file, depending on the browser and Windows version:

Windows x86, Firefox %windir%\System32\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
Windows x64, Firefox %windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\mms.cfg
Google Chrome (version 87 and earlier) for Windows %localappdata%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg
Edge Chromium for Windows %localappdata%\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Pepper Data\Shockwave Flash\System\mms.cfg

Then in the browser on a web page with Flash content, select Adobe Flash -> Allow, refresh the page, click on Flash content and in the bottom caption “Adobe Flash Player was blocked because it is out of date” select “Run this time”.

allow to run flash player content on windows using exclusion file mms.cfg

This is a temporary workaround, because in the summer of 2021, Microsoft will release a cumulative update for all supported versions of Windows that will completely remove the built-in Flash Player.

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1 comment

Artur January 25, 2021 - 4:37 pm

If instructions in article didn’t work for you edit mms.cfg and replace

EnableAllowList=1
AllowListUrlPattern=

with

EnableWhiteList=1
WhiteListUrlPattern=

Reply

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