Let me start out by saying that Adobe's current process of downloading and installing Flash Player in a word - SUCKS!
Some specifics: XPSP3 IE8 Firefox14 Internet access by Dial-up. (Yes, there are still dial-up users out here. Not everyone can afford the the 50 to 100 bucks a month for FiOS, Xfinity, or whatever the current flavor of broadband is that is being pushed by telephone, cable, or satellite companies.)
So I download the 1 Meg flash installer program from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer.
Let me say I'm not enchanted with these types of installers software vendors use because in my experience more often than not - they bomb. I would perfer to simply download a program's installation file right to my hard drive and install the software without requiring an online connection to the web. So when I run the flash installer, guess what - IT BOMBS!
Part way though the install (alway at 47%) it gives me a "Download Timeout" error; and then when I clck the finish button it opens a browser window to load http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/completion/aih/?exitcode=-1
I then go to try running the flash installer program again, only to discover the FILE IS GONE! Why Adobe made the decision to have the installer delete itself on a failure, is beyond me. Stupid, STUPID, STUPID!
I'm now forced to start the whole process over again by going to //get.adobe.com/flashplayer once more and download the installer program again. (Fool me once Adobe; you won't fool me twice! I now make copies of the installer program and run that instead of the original file.)
Anyway all my attempts with the installer program result in the same failure. So the exit page that the install program opens in the browser window has a couple of links on it. I follow the one link that takes me to: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/installation-problems-flash-player-windows.html
Progress bar hangs during download / Unable to connect to server / Unable to download metafile
Reason: The Flash Player installer sometimes has trouble working in some firewall proxy server environments.
Workaround: Download the Adobe Flash Player installer directly by clicking one of the following links.
Flash Player for ActiveX (Internet Explorer)
Flash Player Plug-in (All other browsers
Except .... when I click on either one of these links, the browser (and this occurs in both IE and Firefox) starts loading the link to the server at "download.macromedia.com", but it just waits ... and waits ... and waits some more; until it is quite clear that the thing is just hanging there, waiting for a response from a server that must either be the slowest one on the net, or offline.
Now after spending the better part of nearly 8 hours with this idiocy, I have yet to update the versions of the Flash Player on my computer, and I am highly inscensed with this freaking mess. And by the way, this isn't the first time I've gone though this. It has been so bad of late, that I have come to dread anytime I need to get an update for Adobe's Flashplayers.
So here is my question: Why doen't Adobe just post a damn link to the ftp server where their damn program installation files are stored? It would save everyone a helluva lot of grief!
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