Posts Tagged ‘flash player’
If you’re reading this post then I’m guessing that you’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to get sites with video content to load and you’re getting a lot of errors about something called flash.ocx. Most likely you’re getting an error message telling you that this file is missing, is incompatible with your version of Flash player or a similar error. So what can you do – and what is this file anyway? Don’t panic; it’s not that serious, thankfully.
This file is the Active X control for Flash Player 6, which many computers still have installed. You’ll probably want to upgrade to a newer version at some point, but you’ll need to do something; unless you can face a World Wide Web without Flash – which many sites require you have installed in order to view their content.
If you’ve been worried that this error is some sort of malicious code like a virus, you can take a deep breath now. It’s something your system requires in order to allow Flash content to be displayed in your browser. You can safely remove this file; and in fact, you’re going to have to in order to resolve the problem. It’s not as hard as you might think – just follow the steps below and you’ll be free of the errors and able to enjoy Flash content on the web in short order.
The first thing you’ll need to do is to uninstall Flash Player using the install and remove software tab in your Windows Control Panel. Once you’ve done this, then you’ll need to track down a couple of files which may be left behind by the uninstall process.
What you’re looking for is flash.ocx – just search for it using the search tool in your start menu. Once you’ve found it, this is what you’ll need to do:
Open the start menu and click on Run. Type in regsvr32 followed by the full path to the file and /u.
For instance: regsvr32 C:myfile /u
Select OK when prompted and the problem file will be unregistered. Still with me? We’re almost done.
Do another search, this time for the file enterflash.ocx and remove the file if it’s there. Next, search for and remove swflash.inf. Then just reboot, download and install the newest version of Flash Player and everything should be running smoothly.
This is a relatively easy problem to resolve, but there are other problems which can crop up on Windows systems. If you’ve had your computer for a while and have installed and uninstalled a lot of programs, there is probably a lot of unnecessary or corrupted registry keys on your system – these can cause problems of all sorts and can also slow your PCs performance.
It’s a good idea to run a good registry cleaner regularly to keep your system clean, lean and running its best. A registry cleaner can also get rid of malicious registry entries left by viruses and spyware, even if you thought your anti-virus software had taken care of it, these entries can cause trouble – take good care of your computer and it will return the favor.