I wasn’t sure where to post this, but this appears to be the most appropriate place.
A little background; I handle technical support for an educational software company, and our product utilizes the Flash Player as the delivery method. We require the Flash 6 Player for our program, as the most recent version was developed in Flash MX.
Since late November last year, I have been encountered several (close to 100 cases at this point) users who have somehow had their Flash Player installation (Active X version in all cases) revert to the v5 Player. They have not initiated this on their own, and are usually very confused as to why they can’t run our program all of the sudden.
When a user logs into our program, we perform a Flash detection script to determine if they have a compatible Flash Player (v6 r47 or higher) and then set a cookie if this is successful, so the user won’t have to run the detection script every time they use our program. When a user who’s player has reverted already has this cookie set, they are able to attempt to launch the program, but all they will see is “Movie Not Loaded…” since they cannot load the MX content with the Flash 5 player.
Once the user calls in, the solution is to simply upgrade them to the Flash 8 Player. The big issue is that I have not been able to figure out what is causing their Flash Players to revert to the Flash 5 Player. I have not found a common thread other than that they are all Windows XP users with IE 6 using the ActiveX version of the Flash Player. I have not been able to confirm that all of the users had the Flash 7 Player, but I am fairly certain this is the case. Also, a good number of the users had Dell computers, but there were several who did not (though they were all preconfigured machines, none were custom built). Many of the users denied downloading any updates, and I am certain they did not perform the downgrade themselves.
The only thing I have been able to think of is that Microsoft or Dell or one of the manufacturers who have software on these machines has issued some sort of update in reaction to the Flash 7 security issues announced last fall. Somehow this update is “fixing” the security issue for the user without informing them of it.
I have not been able to find anything about this anywhere, and am completely at a loss as to what could be responsible at this point. I was hoping someone here has heard something about this or even experienced it themselves. I don’t mind helping these users upgrade their Players, but I’d sure like to know how the heck this is occuring.
-Jake
