Adobe Flash Player on Microsoft Terminal Server

Adobe Flash can be a systems administrator’s nemesis on a Microsoft Terminal Server.

After installing the Adobe Flash ActiveX widget, you might notice that non-administrative users aren’t able to browse sites utilizing flash. They’ll be presented with a rather ambiguous message.

The error: “Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe’s Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player. ”

I must admit that I do like polite error messages, butbutbutbutbut I already have the latest Flash Player!

This only happens in IE, Firefox is just fine. I’d tell my users to just browse in Firefox, but of course we have some applications (IE: SharePoint, CRM and others) where IE is pretty much required.

So, what’s the fix?

Open regedit and find these two keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{D27CDB6B-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D27CDB6B-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}

Right click -> Permissions -> Click Everyone -> Check the “Read” box -> No reboot needed. Now, with any luck, your users can get Flash goodness. I tend to test the fix out by going to YouTube and rewarding myself with a video.

Till next time…