Flash not working after System Update

[kurtschoen]

I am not a very techie MInt user - I installed it one year ago, and it just has worked great with no problems on my Lenovo laptop ... until now.

I did a system update today by clicking on the shield-shaped thing at the bottom of the screen. After doing so, I went to Youtube to watch videos - it won't play them now, and says I need to install Flash. I thought Mint 10 already came with Flash? Why would the system update eliminate / disable Flash? What can I do to make it work again?

Not sure where to go from here.

Kurt

[wyrdoak]

If you are using Fire Fox try a Plugin called "Flash aid" and run it, It should fix you Flash problems. It works for me and I use Chrome most of the time but still keep Fire Fox as my work horse.

[kurtschoen]

Thank you wrdoak for the suggestion - I installed Flash Aid and ran the Wizard - it opened up a Terminal window, grabbed the apparently appropriate download, and then asked me for my password to finish the install - left a nice blinking cursor for me to type the password, but frustratingly the keyboard would not type onto the Terminal window. I tried multiple times but could not get my password to type up into the Terminal at teh blinking cursor, so was unable to see if your solution would work.

I guess I'll wait for further input from more people today, and if I don't get a solution, will make another Mint installation disc sand wipe the computer clean and reinstall everything. Can't imagine what happened, but can't complain really about a free O/S that up until today has worked great.

Kurt

[kurtschoen]

Well, I downloaded Google Chrome and am able to see videos there quite nicely. Such a shame, as Firefox was my old buddy, and was a bit faster on my machine. But, for now, I will just use Chrome. Perhaps later one of the Mint tech people will look into why Firefox stops playing Flash after the most recent update.

Go Mint!

Kurt

[wyrdoak]

I've been using FireFox and Thunderbird since it was Netscape Navigator on Win 3.11. Started using Chrome so I could backup my bookmarks to my Gmail account while I was learning and breaking OS's.

[kurtschoen]

Well, sometimes back to the basics beats panic. I went to Synaptic Package Manager, typed Flash in the search box, used the SPM to install Flash again, restarted Firefox, and now it can play videos again.

Still don't know why Flash dumped after the system update - but anyway, the fix was just to use SPM and reinstall Flash directly.

I do love Linux Mint 10!