Installing Flash Player Plugin on Firefox without having Administrator Access or Premissions
UPDATE: The following guide, originally written for Firefox 2, has been used successfully on Firefox 3, Firefox 3.5 and Firefox 3.6. Users of Firefox Portable edition (versions 3, 3.5 and 3.6) also have been successful using this guide.
The Windows computers available at my University permits login only by autenticated users (students) who don't have Administrator access and permissions.
Installing software on those PC is then not possible.
Recently they finally installed Firefox 2 but without the Flash plugins, which is absolutly useful/needed.
I then tryed to install the Flash Player using the "standard" way (click on the missing plugin link then install the plugin..). However without administrator plugins it was not possible to install.
Then I started doing some tests trying to install the plugin manually. Now I have it installed and working perfectly!
This is how I managed to install it without administrator permissions:
- Download the XPI archive of the Flash Player Plugin to your hard disk (right click on the download link then "Save link as.."). XPI archives are only ZIP files containing the files used by the plugins.
- So you can safely rename the file you just downloaded, called flashplayer-win.xpi, into flashplayer-win.zip (you are changing its extension from .xpi to .zip)
- Extract the files in the archive. You can use any program capable of opening .zip files (WinZip, WinRAR or the free and great 7-zip). There are also websites which can uncompress archives: wobzip.org.
- Copy the files flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll to %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Plugins\
- %APPDATA% is not a real folder. It's an alias. By inserting it in your windows explorer address bar, you'll be redirected to the real folder which holds your applications profiles and settings. The location of this folder depends on various setting that's why we need the alias and not an absolute path.
- You can open this folder simply choosing "Start → Run → Type in %APPDATA% → OK".
- In case you don't have a Plugins folder you can create one and place your files there.
- Restart Firefox
- Enjoy your flash websites!
Reference:
Profile folder on MozillaZine Knowledge Base.
Installing Flash in Portable Firefox with no installer at AcidLabs.org Blog.
- fabio's blog
- 465973 reads
It works !... Good
It works !...
Good job.
RESPECT.
Works !...
Respect.
It works.
Thank you very much
Thanks
Thank you very much. :)
Thanks...
Thanks a lot for this valuable suggestion..
Thanks a lot! This saved me a
Thanks a lot! This saved me a lot of headaches since the company insists I use Internet Exploder... ugh.
You are a genius! Thank you
You are a genius! Thank you for sharing this information!!
Good work.
Wow... it took more than this for me to get it to work, had to improvise, but the basis of this helped tremendously, thanks a crapload man.
Basically I had to install firefox to a flash drive I have, so that I can actually browse the folders, and found the addon folder, then just did what you said, restarted, and it works, freaking epic. Thanks a bunch.
Great Post man .. I have been
Great Post man .. I have been trying to work this out from a long time ....really helped a lot ..
Jamie, do what I did, get a
Jamie, do what I did, get a flash drive and plug it in, they can't disallow your downloading and installing onto that particular drive due to rights. If they do, report them. Then just do what I did.
question
When i try and download the programs for extracting the zip files, i still need administrator privileges to download these programs,,,,,, it would be good if you showed us how to do it with screenshots.
Edit: clicked the wrong reply
Edit: clicked the wrong reply button -.-
Jamie, do what I did, get a flash drive and plug it in, they can't disallow your downloading and installing onto that particular drive due to rights. If they do, report them. Then just do what I did.
Shockwave
Hello! I have succesfully installed flash player (thnx a lot) but i'm still in need of shockwave player for some websites. Where can i get the file for the plugin for shockwave??
check the old comments to
check the old comments to this page.. some other user might had your same needs.. If you can't find google for "shockwave .xpi"..
Let me know if you have problems..
brilliant work !!! i spend
brilliant work !!! i spend lots of days without flash player but your Text is GREAT ihave same problem as writer..
thanks
Superb man........
Superb man........
How to get it to work with firefox portable
Using the %appdata% will not work if you are trying to get it to work with firefox portable.
For firefox portable, you need to navigate to the \FirefoxPortable\Data\plugins directory in windows explorer and put the two files in there.
big thumbs up!!
Worked like a charm!!! Great work-a-round!
GODSEND!
Thank you so much for posting these instructions! My (university admin) office's IT "upgraded" our computer to an active directory (read: horribly restrictive environment) and I couldn't see any website requiring flash (couldn't install the debugger because, thank you IT "upgrade", I'm no longer able to d/l .exe files, etc, you know, because "there's a lot of bad things people can download without knowing" garbage). So this is a godsend. Literally. Thank you!
Great
Great Great work ... keep rocking .
Idiots everywhere: the link
Idiots everywhere: the link is MACROMEDIA.COM. What malware are you talking about, bitch? xD
===
BTW, thanks: gr8 guide, helped me a lot!
Oh boy! Isn't breaking
Oh boy! Isn't breaking universities computer policies great? I'll bet IT thinks it's just awesome to have an unknown, unsecured, and unmanageable version of Flash on the computers. Cause, y'know, trojans and malware are super cool.
Idiots everywhere: the link
Idiots everywhere: the link is MACROMEDIA.COM. What malware are you talking about, bitch? xD
===
BTW, thanks: gr8 guide, helped me a lot!
Thanks
Thanks man!
Thank you, man! You rock x)
Thank you, man! You rock x)
Nice - thanks for the post.
Nice - thanks for the post.
Greaat !!!!
Thank you very much for the tutorial.
Works awesome !
Work fine on 3.6.
Fred
works like a breeze
great advice - works like a breeze on Firefox 3.6 !
This works! Thank you so
This works! Thank you so much! It's important that you place the files in a folder called plugins and not just in extensions.
Cheers!
worked a treat. Thanks mate!
it is not working with any of
it is not working with any of the flash web sites..
For example :
http://waterlife.nfb.ca/
may i know why??
Well, it means that the
Well, it means that the plugin has not been installed correctly. Please follow again the instructions and provide more details of your problem.
Thanks,
FV
maybe you can also try tweaking DivX webplayer like this???
first of all, thank you for this (re flash player) helpful instruction.
maybe you could also try this one: Installing DivX web player on Firefox or IE without having Administrator Access or Premissions.
hopefully you could tweak it as well like this Flash thing that you did. it would really help us a lot.
coz watch-movie sites like stagevu.com needs DivX web player and i tried installing it but needs admin priv. please help!
send me an email once you've figure it out! thanks so much!!!
-Jaja
Works just as he says even on
Works just as he says even on the latest Firefox 3.5.7
yes, it worked
You are awesome. Thank you very much.
A very helpful article that
A very helpful article that helped me out as well, thanks. The bad news however, is that the URL for the xpi on Macromedia’s website currently (2010-01-14) does not provide the latest Flash version, but the outdated 2009-07-17 version, or 10.0.32.18 instead. I could not find a URL (on Macromedia’s or any other website) that does provide the latest version in zip format, so as a workaround I would advise to copy both npswf32.dll and flashplayer.xpt from another pc (on which the Flash installer file was used) containing the latest version. They should be located in C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash.
email it to yourself
you could always just email the file to yourself from a another pc that has the file
Thanks for pointing this
Thanks for pointing this out.
I'm sorry but I don't think it would be legal to distribute files from the Flash install archive without permission from Adobe.
I'll just wait to see if the people at Adobe will update the link I'm using and look for a solution if it doesn't get updated.
Thank you soooo much this was
Thank you soooo much this was so awesome! Kept getting the can't install flash because I wasn't an admin and this worked perfectly!
Cannot Copy Files Due To AntiVirus
Great solution, but for me unfortunately my antivirus (works, so cannot disable) will not allow me to copy these files to the %APPDATA% or Plugins folder. I tried renaming the extension, but still the files were blocked.
Anyone any other ideas?
You might want to install
You might want to install Firefox Portable to any directory you have write permissions. Then install the plugin within the Plugins folder into the Firefox Portable installation.
I don't know if this will work for you but you can surely give it a try.
Worked perfectly! THANKS!!!
Worked perfectly! THANKS!!!
thanks a lot......
thanks a lot, now i can play in our cyber library because of your plugins....
your the MAN....
Thanks a million! Worked
Thanks a million! Worked perfectly!
Thanks
Thanks. Great content. It's magic.
Yeah
(evil grin)
I followed the instructions and now I have the plug in working like a charm.
i couldnt open the flash
i couldnt open the flash player file. it seems that i have to install winrar but dont have the privileges.
As I said in the article, you
As I said in the article, you can use an online zip tool like http://www.wobzip.org/ .. With that site you'll be able to open the archive and get the files inside. Remember to rename the file to an .zip file before uploading to the website.
It works!
Your are the man!
I have installed firefox and then followed your instructions and all works.
One note, I have copied the files stright to the plugin folder as cld find APPDATA%.
Thanks
Genious!!
You are the Man!!!
that was cool......really
that was cool......really thanx...keep d good work....
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