It's manic at Manick

I had a machine today where IE8 would consistently crash if it attempted to install the Adobe Flash Browser by visiting http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. As soon as the yellow bar appeared to ask the user if they wanted to install the component then Windows would pop up a crash dialogue complaining about some memory issue.

I spent a long time trying to resolve this before I found a solution.

I tried following Adobe’s instructions for uninstalling the player and attempted to re-install it. I tried disabling various IE Add-Ons from the Tools | Manage Add-ons menu. No joy – same problem every time. I even tried the Reset button on the Tools | Internet Options -> Advanced tab (careful as this can wipe important settings, make sure you know what this does). All to no avail.

I searched for a long time to find a downloadable up to date offline installer from Adobe and couldn’t find one.

Then I eventually found my solution….there is one – an offline installer that is and it’s available if you visit http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ and then click on ‘Different operating system or browser’ and follow the instructions.

It’s also available here.

As for why IE8 was crashing – I never got to the bottom of that. I did contact Microsoft but was told that they would not provide support for IE8 if the machine is connected to a domain. Not sure if that is the official line or not.