Knowledge Base

Applies to

Ion 3.6 or later
Internet Explorer
Windows 10

Summary

This article assumes that users have access to the Ion Configuration Manager, access to a copy of the 32-bit Flash ActiveX control file and are familiar with creating and configuring rules and profiles with Ion.

This article will guide users through setting up a profile to load a given web site using Flash. In this example, the default version of Flash installed in Windows 10 is Flash 32. Since Flash was packaged with Windows 10 and will be blocked on January 12th 2021 and later removed we will need to remove it from the system before we are able to load our chosen version of Flash. Microsoft provides a patch to remove flash for your particular build of Windows 10 and you can find that here. You can try this tutorial example with older versions of Flash provided you have the earlier version 32-bit .OCX file. We will be using an older version of Flash 32 (32.0.0.330) for our examples in this article.

Before You Begin

This article makes the assumption that you have…

1. Installed Ion Configuration Manager
2. Installed Browsium Client
3. A copy of Flash 32’s 32-bit .OCX file

Getting Started

Adobe has a Flash application on their support site that will both let you know the version of Flash that you have installed/instantiated through an Ion profile as well as let you know if your version/OS combination has triggered the end-of-life (EOL) messaging.

Visit https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html and click on the ‘Check Now’ button.

After January 12th, you will see not see the green checkmark that used to appear when Flash was able to load and instead you will see an icon with a blue “i” button. This indicates that your Flash version has triggered Adobe’s EOL messaging. Note that the version of Flash 32 we are using (32.0.0.330) does not trigger this EOL messaging.

Preparing Flash 32 for use with Ion

This guide assumes that you have either a Microsoft KB .msu file or a Flash.ocx for the specific version of Flash 32 you will need. In this example we are using 32-bit Flash 32 (32.0.0.330). When you have the 32-bit version .MSU downloaded, you can run expand windows10.0-kb4537759-x86_b0f7438172d6b29037c0caf4f115700f7edeb2b1.msu . -f:* and then run the same command (expand Windows10.0-KB4537759-x86.cab . -f:*) on the corresponding .cab file that was expanded from the .msu file. flash.ocx. Place this file in a directory accessible by all users on the system. We used c:\Browsium\Flash\ in this example.

Creating an Ion profile to load Flash

We will have to create and modify our profile to load the Flash 32 ActiveX control for this project. Follow these steps:

1. Open Ion Configuration Manager, create a new Standard Ion Profile using the Default rendering mode, then select the ‘Custom File Manager’ node.

   

2. Click the “Add” action link in the Action pane of the Manager to bring up the Custom Files Editor:

   

3. Click the ellipsis button to the right of the ‘Source File’ edit box to select the 32-bit .ocx on your system. The location of this file will depend where you have copied it on your machine and it may not match the location shown in our screenshots. On our demo system, we have placed flash.ocx in our “c:\Browsium\Flash\” directory.
4. In the edit box to the right of ‘Target File,’ type in “C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx”. Please refer to the table below for guidance on Windows 10 locations and filenames.
   

   Windows Version	Default Flash “Target File” .OCX Location
   Windows 10, 32-bit Flash	C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx
   Windows 10, 64-bit Flash	C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx

5. Change the “Register ActiveX Control/COM?” option to “Enabled.”
6. Do the same for overriding the 32-bit Flash .ocx using c:\Browsium\Flash\flash.ocx (or your own directory) as the source and C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\Flash.ocx as the target. Be sure to set “Register ActiveX Control/COM?” to Enabled.
7. Your complete dialog should look something like this (with paths adjusted for your system).
   

8. Click “OK” to commit these changes. You should see your entry listed in the ‘Custom Files Manager’ view.
9. We will want to next create a registry entry in the Custom Registry Manager. You can do so by clicking ‘Add’ in the Custom Registry Manager actions pane.
10. Modify the Custom Registry entry to have the following values:
    
    • Hive: Local Machine
    • Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Ext
    • Value Name: VersionCheckEnabled
    • Type: DWORD
    • Value: 0
11. Your profile is ready to use. Now you need a rule to invoke this profile on Adobe’s support site. Select “Add Rule using this Profile” and set up the rule with helpx.adobe.com as the value using the Simple match method.
12. Click “Start Test Configuration” from the File menu to deploy this project to your PC.
13. Wait for the Browsium Client splash screen to appear & disappear; this means the Ion processes have restarted with your new settings in place.
14. Now open Internet Explorer and navigate to http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html and click on the ‘Check Now’ button.
15. The Flash control should load, this time with Flash 32 (32.0.0.330). You should see the version indicated by the Flash object as well as the green checkmark indicating we have not triggered the EOL messaging.
    

If Microsoft adds particular Flash Active X controls to IE11’s kill-bit list you can override that entry in the registry by following the steps outlined in our KB article “Overriding an ActiveX killbit using Ion’s Custom Registry Manager“. For instance, Flash 32.0.0.330’s CLSID is {D27CDB6E-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}.

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