How to uninstall Abobe Flash Player
So you want to stop getting notifications to update Adobe Flash Player, which was pretty much killed years ago but is still updated regularly because, you know, it’s not 2010 any more.
Seriously, they announced an end to support in 2010, 2011 was supposedly the final round of updates.. Then in 2017 they announced again they were killing it off. Microsoft will still evidently support it in their browsers until December 2020.
But it’s not as easy as going to add/remove programs and choosing uninstall Adobe Flash Player. If you have Chrome Browser, you’ll get stuck with this little screen:
Of course, exiting Chrome does nothing because Chrome probably has a billion background services on your system even with the browser window closed.
You’ve got two options here. One is to go into Task Manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and end every task manually, being aware that given enough time Chrome will probably restart itself, sort of like any self-repairing monster in cinematic horror, or you can use TaskKill.
TaskKill evidently ships with Windows 10 now, so there should be no need to locate it or install it.
Open up a command prompt with administrative rights (start, type “cmd”, choose run as administrator) and when you’re in the command window type in: taskkill /f /im chrome.exe
Chrome will be terminated, and Adobe Flash Player will finally say it’s uninstalled.
Now, I may be going a bit nuts here, but I’m pretty sure I removed Adobe Flash Player last week, specifically because I have photos of it from removing it last week, and I just removed it again today.
So, if it comes back on you, drop a line. I’m attempting to figure out if I’m just suffering multiple-machine forgetfulness or if it reinstalled itself.
