Windows Server

Installing Adobe Flash Using Group Policy

Downloading The MSI’s

Before you can download the full installation msi files you must sign up with Adobe to distribute Flash.  This is free and relatively easy to do so.  At the time of this posting this was the link used to sign up.
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=distribution_form&pv=rdr
After you sign up Adobe will send you a link to the full install files.

There are 2 types of installation.  If you are only going to be running Internet Explorer on your machines you only need to download the Active X version.  You will need to download the plugin version if you are running browsers like Firefox and Chrome.

Editing The MSI’s

The msi files can be edited using Orca.  I have not tested any of the switches at this time.

Deploying Via Group Policy (GPO)

Now you are ready to deploy the package via Group Policies. The general process is to do the following:

  1. Create new GPO (or use existing GPO for same software title)
  2. Copy the install files to a network share
  3. Add MSI package
  4. Add MST transforms file (note you can only do this at the beginning, and it cannot be changed later).

Turning Off Auto Update

You can turn off the auto update by editing or creating the mmc.cfg file.  The file is located in different spots depending on you OS.  For Windows 32 bit OS’s it will be located in the C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash directory.  For Windows 64 bit OS’s It will be located in both the C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash and the C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlash directories.

The mmc.cfg file I created has the following entries.
AutoUpdateDisable=1  <– “1” turns off the AutoUpdate
SilentAutoUpdateEnable=0  <–  “0” Leaves Silent off “1” Turns it on

The file must be saved using UTF-8 encoding
The file is created automatically if you install Flash using the .exe installer.  If the .msi installer is used the file will not be created.  Be aware that if you have modified the file and update your Flash using the .exe installer, your modified file will be overwritten.

I decided I didn’t want to manually copy the file so I created a startup script that copies the file for me.  I read that a logon script does not work because users may not have permissions to copy the files.  Here is what my startup script looks like.

Set oFSO = CreateObject(“Scripting.FileSystemObject”)
sNetworkFlashPath = “\SERVERpathmms.cfg”
sLocalFlashPath = “C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlashmms.cfg”
sLocalFlashPath64 = “C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlashmms.cfg”

If oFSO.FolderExists (“C:WINDOWSSystem32MacromedFlash”) Then
oFSO.CopyFile sNetworkFlashPath, sLocalFlashPath, True

End If

If oFSO.FolderExists (“C:WINDOWSSysWOW64MacromedFlash”) Then
oFSO.CopyFile sNetworkFlashPath, sLocalFlashPath64, True

End If

Set oFSO = Nothing

I put this startup script in my GPO that deploys the Flash software.