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. However, there are some cases where these privileges are needed, and if you don't know the administrator's password, you will find that you are unable to install the programs that you need. Luckily, Windows operating systems provide a loophole that you can use to give yourself administrative privileges.
Will users who do not have admin rights on their computers be able to upgrade to new Flash player version by themselves?
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
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
Oli
balaweblogbalaweblogI 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.
How To Install Flash Player Without Admin Rights
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