Comments on: Firefox 3 gotcha: Installing Flash and Java

It seems that Firefox 3, under Windows, has a problem auto-installing Flash and Java

[sonofafur]

I have installed Firefox 3 since it came out and the plug-ins carried over from Firefox 2. Having used Firefox since the original public edition, I can say that the Plug-in installer has never worked recently, however simply visiting the sites (Shockwave / Flash / Java google searches to find their sites) has a working plug-in installer. This may be because either the sites haven't updated their flash player/etc link or this function never really worked anyway. I've gotten it to work once with flash back in the days of Firefox 1, but ended up manually installing anyway.

[mhinnewyork]

But, since auto-install worked for me under Ubuntu 8.04, any problem is probably with Firefox rather than with Adobe or Sun. Probably. Michael Horowitz

[computergeek1971]

I had the same problem with RC1 and RC2 on Windows XP SP3. I also had to manually download and install them.

[mhinnewyork]

Thanks for the info. I forgot to mention that the XP systems I used were at SP2, I haven't upgraded any of my machines to SP3. Michael Horowitz

[AySz88]

According to a few bugs filed in bugzilla, the Firefox people forced Java and Flash auto-installs to fail because the installer .xpi were buggy. See:
Flash: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=433592 and https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=416396
Java: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=419928#c35

[mhinnewyork]

Thanks for this, I'll follow-up on it. Michael Horowitz

[AySz88]

Oops, there seems to be a Firefox bug mucking things up in there too: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=435788

[moopenguin32]

I just installed Firefox 3.0 on a Vista Home Premium laptop and encountered this very same thing with Flash. It did not hang when searching, but came up to the point where I had to click on the "Manual Install" button. I remember in past versions of Firefox where the plug-in would actually install. While this is not a major problem, having it install without going elsewhere is convenient.

[peterh_oz]

I had the same problem. Download the installer, and choose to "Run as Administrator". This FIXES the problem and flash is now installed correctly.

[waltgrieve]

I got Javascript on Firefox 3 working with the following simple steps,,,,
1. Tools-> Options-> Content
2. Enable Javascript and Enable Java were already checked so I unchecked Enable Java and clicked OK
3. Then again go into Tools-> Options-> Content and Check Enable Java and click OK

It seemed that toggling the option off then on again seemed to kick it into life!

[Frungi]

This problem very much irritates me, because I'm a college student. On the lab computers on campus, students obviously don't have access to administrator accounts, so it's impossible (please correct me if I'm wrong!) to install Flash for Firefox 3.

[DigsRetro]

OMG, I thought this was just ME. My dual core computer died so i bought a used pentium 4 machine and installed the latest Firefox on it. I have been unable to figure out how to enable Java and Flash even though i've downloaded both and gotten the successful download page. I've rebooted too. Still when I go to YouTube or somewhere that requires Flash, it says I don't have it installed. I also have had trouble with websites saying that I don't have my browser set to receive cookies but i've double checked and I DO. ARGGGH!