Flash Player now end of life... no more !!

[hazelnut]

Quote

"Since Adobe will no longer be supporting Flash Player after December 31, 2020 and Adobe will block Flash content from running in Flash Player beginning January 12, 2021, Adobe strongly recommends all users immediately uninstall Flash Player to help protect their systems," Adobe says.

"Flash Player may remain on your system unless you uninstall it.  Uninstalling Flash Player will help secure your system since Adobe does not intend to issue Flash Player updates or security patches after the EOL Date."

 

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/adobe-flash-player-is-officially-dead-tomorrow/

Make sure you uninstall it. Read the article above.

[nukecad]

For advanced users:

Just to note that the optional KB4577586 in the Microsoft catalog has 2 pages, with the updates for win 10 versions above 1903 on the second page.

[Andavari]

Whatever that Microsoft "update" (let's call it a remover instead) does it leaves Flash Player intact on the system.

May not be able to use it anymore, but I would've thought they'd nuke it off the system. Running the Adobe Flash Player Uninstaller doesn't get rid of the leftover of it either.

The only thing I can see that's happened invisibly in the background when running that Microsoft remover was it removed the Control Panel icon for Flash Player settings, and made the .SWF extension useless.

[nukecad]

As well as removing the CP icon it removed the .exe and all the other embedded Flash files when I ran it, but it did leave the empty FlashPlayer folder behind.

But it didn't remove them until I did a restart after running the KB; you have done a restart?

Where are you seeing remnants?

I'm still seeing a few registry entries, particularly potential file associations, from the built in Flash add-on for Edge/Edge Chromium, (presumably there will be some for Google Chrome itself and other Chromium based browsers if you have one installed?).
Although those browser add-ons should have been removed by now, or at least permenantly disabled.

I'm also seeing a 'FlashDebug' registry entry for Acrobat Reader DC.

There are probably more leftovers, I haven't searched the whole registry.

[Andavari]

I searched the registry but that's not really a problem, I only removed one reference to it.

This is what caught my eye in the WinSxS folder:

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1_none_fdfd5401e6c802a9\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1_none_fdfd5401e6c802a9\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1_none_fdfd5401e6c802a9\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1_none_fdfd5401e6c802a9\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.172_none_815470a5fb446c4e\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.172_none_815470a5fb446c4e\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.172_none_815470a5fb446c4e\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.172_none_815470a5fb446c4e\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.356_none_816e1571fb309416\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.356_none_816e1571fb309416\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.356_none_816e1571fb309416\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.356_none_816e1571fb309416\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.656_none_816e1b23fb308b8b\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.656_none_816e1b23fb308b8b\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.656_none_816e1b23fb308b8b\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.656_none_816e1b23fb308b8b\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.901_none_819f2efffb0c7898\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.901_none_819f2efffb0c7898\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.901_none_819f2efffb0c7898\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.901_none_819f2efffb0c7898\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1140_none_3952653acc5f8b3e\activex.vch
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1140_none_3952653acc5f8b3e\Flash.ocx
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1140_none_3952653acc5f8b3e\FlashUtil_ActiveX.dll
C:\Windows\WinSxS\amd64_adobe-flash-for-windows_31bf3856ad364e35_10.0.18362.1140_none_3952653acc5f8b3e\FlashUtil_ActiveX.exe

 

[nukecad]

Ah, WinSXS.

You can think of WinSXS (Windows side-by-side) as a merging of 'Windows.old' and the Component Store, so it will have old stuff in there from before it was removed to allow rollbacks of updates.
It also contains stuff from newly downloaded installs that hasn't been installed yet, links to binaries, etc., etc.

More about Win SXS: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/manage-the-component-store

Windows itself will clean it up automatically after a while as the files are no longer needed, or as rollback times expire.

You can also clean it up manually, as far as possible:
Use Disc Cleanups 'Clean up system files' and tick 'Windows Update clean-up'.
You can also use 'StartComponentCleanup' and/or dism.exe to clean more.

More detailed info about cleaning it manually: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/clean-up-the-winsxs-folder

[Andavari]

Disk Cleanup was the first thing I ran before I posted about WinSxS, it didn't do anything. Neither did using that Task Scheduler command in the link you provided, and that's as far as I'll go and I'll leave well enough alone because messing with the WinSxS folder is like opening a can of worms.

[nukecad]

Probably best to let Windows sort out WinSXS itself. (That's the main reason why cleaning of 'Old Windows installations' was dropped from CCleaner).

Checking mine it also has plenty of Flash related stuff.

No doubt the Flash files will dissapear from it by next month, or possibly even on Patch Tuesday.

[Willy2]

Already have received say 3 "update" messages from Flash itself. Then the program asked me to give my consent to remove Flash. Perhaps I will remove Flash at a later stage.

Is Flash still needed to play content (e.g. videos) on websites and in my mediaplayer(s) ? Support for Flash is supposedly removed for (a lot of ??) websites (Youtube ?). But videos are still playing well on Youtube.

[hazelnut]

43 minutes ago, Willy2 said:

Already have received say 3 "update" messages from Flash itself. Then the program asked me to give my consent to remove Flash. Perhaps I will remove Flash at a later stage.

Is Flash still needed to play content (e.g. videos) on websites and in my mediaplayer(s) ? Support for Flash is supposedly removed for (a lot of ??) websites (Youtube ?). But videos are still playing well on Youtube.

Flash hasn't been needed on Youtube for quite a long time. It uses HTML5

https://youtube-eng.googleblog.com/2015/01/youtube-now-defaults-to-html5_27.html