How To Install Flash Player Without Admin Rights. Privileges during installation. Adobe's Flash Player needs elevated rights during installation, if the user has.
Lets say you are currently working on a computer where you have standard user rights. This means that you cannot install software that requires elevated privileges, nor that you can perform operations that require admin rights. Many software programs for instance require administrative privileges during installation.
Adobe's Flash Player needs elevated rights during installation, if the user has only standard rights it cannot be installed; At least not the standard way.
Lets assume you have access rights to use a computer at school, work or a public place, maybe on a company laptop or at a school library. A web browser is available but the Flash plugin is not installed so that you cannot access Flash based content sites such as Youtube.
Please note that this method works perfectly fine if Firefox is the web browser used on the system. It is unlikely that Chrome or Opera are installed on the system, but workarounds exist for these browsers as well.
If you are a Firefox user and want to use Flash but do not have administrative privileges do the following:
- Download the latest version of the Firefox Flash plugin from the official Macromedia website. Your best option is to right-click the download link and select Save As.
- Extract the contents of the downloaded file to a folder on the local system. You may need to change the file extension to zip if you have only access to the standard Windows unzipper.
- Move the two files NPSWF32.dll and flashplayer.xpt into the Firefox plugin directory. The plugin directory is located in the root directory if you are using a portable version of Firefox, if Firefox is installed is is located in the profile folder. Easiest option to find out where the folder is located is to enter about:support in the address bar. This works for Firefox 3.6 and up.
- If no Plugins folder exist create the folder and move the two Flash Player files into the folder.
- You can now enjoy Flash based contents. Be aware that the plugin is not auto-updating itself. You need to make sure to keep it up to date manually.
You have a few additional options that you may want to explore. If you can run portable software, you may want to consider using Google Chrome portable, since the browser ships with the Flash Player plugin natively.
The same is true for other portable browsers. Just configure the browser at home so that it includes the Flash plugin and run it from the computer where you have limited access rights.
I'm not sure if there is a way for Internet Explorer as well. If anyone has some insights let me know in the comments.
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This would be interesting to know for:Windows 98Windows XP/2000/VistaMacsUnix/Linux
Edward TanguayEdward Tanguay5 Answers
Take a look at the Adobe instructions for more clarification...
I know on Linux, at least, you do not need admin privs. Flash is installed in ~/.mozilla/plugins when you use the .tar.gzed installer script.
On Windows, I think there's only the option of doing a system-wide install so you need Administrator rights.
From the instructions for both Mac and Windows:
Installation of Adobe Flash Player may require administrative access to your PC, which is normally provided by your IT department.
May require? Thanks for being clear, Adobe =) I think it's safe to assume they do as they're both system-integrated installers. The same goes for Linux if you use the YUM/RPM installers. If you use the script, you can run it as anybody with execution rights.
OliOliFor Mac the answer is 'not really, but then again, yes' :P
Actually he wouldn't need it. On Mac there is a directory for browser plugins. No matter if you use Safari or Firefox (or possibly another browser), it is standard or Mac that browsers search their plugins in that folder. It is named:
And as always on Mac, this directory exists twice. Once as system directory
and also once for every user
Install Flash Player Without Mcafee
It doesn't matter into which directory a user puts a plugin, the browser will look into both. That means if I put it into the System's Library folder, all users will have the plugin, if I put it into my folder only, only my user has it.
So far the theory. The problem in practice is that Adobe doesn't ship the flash plugin as a plugin file, you could just copy into either location (why not? On Mac almost any app or plugin could just be shipped as a file. It really won't kill the user to manually copy it somewhere), but it ships an installer (I hate installers on Mac). And the installer wants to put it into the System's Library folder for all users AFAIK. To do that, it will prompt the user for the appropriate permissions and only an admin user can grant these permissions.
MeckiMeckiFor Windows: yes you need admin rights for the system to install flash player. which installs through an exe file
OliI just managed to get it working for a Mac OS X without admin rights.
Download the installer from Adobe and make sure to save it somewhere, rather than letting it automatically open. Unzip the installation archive and you should end up with 'Install Flash Player 10' mounted. Check inside that, but instead of opening 'Adobe Flash Player.pkg', right click that file to Show Package Contents.
In the folder that pops up, open Contents and look for archive.pax.gz or resources/adobe flash player.pax.gz, both seem to contain the same things. Unzip that archive.
You'll find flashplayer.xpt and flash player.plugin in there. Copy both of them to users/whichever user you are/library/internet plugins... if you see those files there already, it's the right place, just want to replace them with the new ones, then restart your browser.
Hopefully that'll work for you.
NO If your using Firefox Download the XPI archive of the Flash Player Plugin to your hard drivehttp://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi
Rename the file you downloaded, called flashplayer-win.xpi, into flashplayer-win.zip Extract the files in the archive