Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Flash player is one of those applications that are on every machine but you rarely see them as separate applications. Since they deal with data over the Internet Flash is also a great security risk. So it’s quite important to keep it updated.
But Flash itself will not make this task easy for you. Although it does update itself it also leaves old versions laying around on your machine. It wise to get rid of them.
Here are some hints how to accomplish that:
- Check “Add Remove Programs” and uninstall everything that smells of Flash (not flesh!)
- Goto Adobe and grab Flash Uninstaller, close all open applications including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, MSN Messenger and run it
- Go to C:\WINDOWS\System32\Macromedia\Flash\ (or equivalent path for your Windows installation) and delete all .ocx files
- Check if player is not included with other software titles. (one of those can be Adobe Bridge) Try to upgrade those applications first and hope for the best.
Now you are ready for a clean install of the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.