TechNote (Archived)

Windows may require a restart after installing Flash Player 7

Issue

Internet Explorer for Windows may require a restart after auto-install of the Flash Player ActiveX control (version 7 and below).

Reason

This can occur if the Macromedia Flash Player currently installed is in use during the auto-installation process. As a result, the installer does not overwrite the current version of the Flash Player ActiveX control. Upon reboot of the computer the newer version is copied over the old version.

This behavior is not peculiar to the Flash Player. Installing other ActiveX controls under similar operating conditions can result in the same behavior. This behavior is due to the Windows Operating system placing a DLL lock on an ActiveX control that is in use. For example, if you have multiple browsers open and the Yahoo! Toolbar is running on the browser that is not updating Flash, then Windows will require a reboot when updating the browser.

For Flash Player 8 and above, Macromedia will change the name of the OCX file to prevent the necessity of the reboot. You may, however, need to restart your browser to view Flash content with the latest Flash Player.

Solution

To avoid having to restart Windows after updating the ActiveX version of the Flash Player, simply update to Flash Player 8. Or, if you are installing an older Flash Player, close all applications that use Flash before doing the update (this can include certain messaging applications as well as other browser windows).