Aug 29, 2006 - Mass Deployment of the Flash 9 Player
Overcoming scripting challenges to automatic Flash updates across the Enterprise

For those of you that need to do a mass scripted upgrade of Flash Player 9 :: Here's a little tip to save you some time.

Flash Player 8 made future updates very easy and transparent for individual users. However, if you're trying to do this on a large scale by scripting the update - it's quite challenging.

Many companies have strict I.T policies that require the I.T dept to control what software, even if it's a free plug in, to be managed by a sys admin. When you're dealing with hundreds of desktops, obviously you want to script this out.

The first thing you'll need to do is get the free mass distribution license. This will give you access to various installers of the player (.exe, .msi, and an MS S/W Distribution server). To do this you'll need to go here:

http://www.adobe.com/licensing/distribution/

The goal with a script is that it installs silently with no need for user interaction or reboots; they should be oblivious to it. We found that with trying to uninstall Flash 8/Install Over it - that was the hard part.

There is a bug in version 8 so that it won't silently uninstall, it will hang.  Working through a lot of testing to get this to deploy silently without multiple reboots and without having old versions left on the pc.

A tech note provides some insight into the issue:

http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=4a8d52ae

"When you run the Flash Player 9 MSI silently using the /quiet or /qn switch, the uninstaller built into the MSI to remove previous Flash Players fails to be silent and prompts an uninstallation complete dialog."

"Solution:
You can use the Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility to resolve the silent uninstall issue and the removal of FlashPlayerTrust issue. For more information, see article 290301 on the Microsoft website at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301/en-us.

However, using the Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility introduces a new issue. After you run the msizapp.exe portion of Microsoft Windows Installer Cleanup Utility, the Flash8.ocx file remains in the folder in a locked state."

The tech note continues to outline the remaining steps in order to get this to work.