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How to enable Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 r2

July 17, 2014 by Paulie 43 Comments

If you are trying to view web pages that contain flash content on Windows Server 2012 r2 then you may find that it does not work. You are then led to a page on the Adobe website tells you that Flash player is already installed on Windows 8 and that you do not need to install it. This post explains how to enable Flash Player on Windows Server 2012.

Message from Adobe Website informing you that Flash Player is already installed on Windows Server 2012 r2   The page then goes on to provide instructions as to how to enable Flash, this basically consists of:

  • Ensuring that the flash player add-on is enabled.
  • Checking that Active-X filtering is disabled.

You will probably find that these instructions do not work for you as flash player is not listed in the Internet Explorer Add-ons.

How to install Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 r2

In order to install Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 you need to install the Desktop Experience Feature. To do this, do the following:

  • Go into server manager.
  • Click add roles and features: Using server manager to install flash player on Windows Server 2012
  • Press next until you reach the “Features” page.
  • Tick the box “Desktop Experience” which is hidden under the “User Interfaces and Infrastructure” feature: Installing the desktop experience to enable Flash player in Windows Server 2012
  • You will then have to accept the installation of some other features to support the installation of desktop experience
  • The features are installed and the server is rebooted: Desktop Experience Feature being installed on Windows Server 2012 r2

Or if you prefer, you can install with the simple but so effective Windows Powershell command:

Install-WindowsFeature Desktop-Experience

The reason I wanted to have access to Flash Player on this particular server was so that I could access the vSphere Web client, which uses flash. Hope this helps someone.

If you are looking for instructions on how to Install Flash Player on Windows Server 2016 – please follow this updated guide.

Filed Under: How To Tagged With: Windows Server 2012 r2

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Brian Peasey says

    January 27, 2015 at 8:36 pm

    Thanks for sharing. Helped me out today 🙂

  2. Karim says

    March 18, 2015 at 7:49 pm

    Yeah. That helped. A LOT. Thank-you for taking the time to make this page and for giving such a simple walkthrough, whereas Microsoft wouldn’t provide this info. Funny how they view Flash as a security concern and make it hard to enable when so many commercial interfaces for enterprise software require it.

  3. Anshika Goyal says

    June 1, 2015 at 12:16 pm

    It really works. I was struggling with it for an hour and tried the steps listed here and it works!!

  4. Pandari ch says

    June 12, 2015 at 9:45 am

    Thank you so much for sharing..

  5. SiliconBike says

    June 26, 2015 at 1:08 pm

    Thank you

  6. Twalaj says

    August 18, 2015 at 9:50 am

    Thanks for the post. Saved me a lot time.

  7. ryman says

    September 1, 2015 at 10:44 am

    Thank you

  8. Fred says

    September 3, 2015 at 10:45 pm

    Cheers Bud

  9. Larry Livingston says

    September 14, 2015 at 6:50 pm

    There is a better, faster way. That doesn’t require a reboot. Install another browser (chrome, or firefox)

  10. Greatful Dharma says

    October 9, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    THANK YOU FOR SHARING.
    I wished i found your website first

  11. Confused IT Guy says

    October 14, 2015 at 4:02 pm

    Thank you so much. I had the same problem, could not access vsphere web client because of flash. This is what I needed.

  12. Enrique Garcia says

    January 19, 2016 at 1:53 am

    Also, after you do the reboot, if it’s still not working for you, make sure you don’t have ActiveX filtering turned ON. It’s in IE under Tools > ActiveX Filtering

  13. Jay Steel says

    February 25, 2016 at 12:03 pm

    Much appreciated, also needed this for vSphere

  14. WALTA says

    February 25, 2016 at 9:52 pm

    THIS HELPED ME VERY MUCH THANK YOU

  15. KinG says

    March 27, 2016 at 10:56 am

    Fab. I searched the whole internet and finally found this useful article.
    Kudos to you. Me too want to access vSphere Web client using IE

  16. mahfoud says

    March 28, 2016 at 2:20 am

    Thank you for your help

  17. Leonel says

    April 20, 2016 at 3:36 pm

    Thanks a lot. Very helpful.

  18. Tim Ross says

    June 1, 2016 at 7:20 pm

    Great job on the post. Effective, short, and to the point. Thanks.

  19. Joe Faradeh says

    June 7, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    I just wanted to thank you for the very good information you provided. On server it always said to just enable but that never worked. Which means it was misleading. Thanks for your incredibly helpful instructions!

  20. Jack Samson says

    July 17, 2016 at 6:10 pm

    Thank you

  21. Marcos says

    July 20, 2016 at 2:40 pm

    Already have Desktop Experienced feature and still unable to use flash.

  22. Ercole Lugari says

    July 22, 2016 at 2:51 pm

    Thanks very much! You are the men! it took me half day to fix this

  23. Zinzi Nokhemane says

    November 15, 2016 at 8:01 am

    I am having issues installing the feature , it keeps failing . want to install it on Windows 2012 R box, help please

  24. Ryan says

    December 11, 2016 at 2:40 am

    2 and a half later and this still helped me. Thanks muh dood.

  25. Prakash says

    December 19, 2016 at 4:23 pm

    Thanks, It helped a lot I was struggling from one hour to get the flash player installed.

  26. Anonymouse says

    March 8, 2017 at 11:40 pm

    Hey man, thanks for that! Had me stumped for a little while but handy to know! I had to do the same thing, install Flash on a Management Jump Host to access VMware Web Client.

  27. kuroshitsuji.org says

    March 30, 2017 at 6:20 pm

    Click Refresh to reload the webpage. If you see the animation playing this time, then Flash Player has been successfully enabled.

  28. Mustapha Amlal says

    May 2, 2017 at 1:48 pm

    Thank you for your help.

  29. Mustapha Amlal says

    May 2, 2017 at 1:49 pm

    Thank you for the solution. Regards

  30. Deepu says

    May 18, 2017 at 9:05 pm

    Thank you

  31. itchy says

    May 24, 2017 at 7:37 pm

    thx

  32. Hieu Nghia says

    June 22, 2017 at 4:29 am

    Thank you very much.

  33. Glenn says

    October 16, 2017 at 2:19 pm

    Enable flash on windows server 2016

    dism /online /add-package /packagepath:”C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Adobe-Flash-For-Windows-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~10.0.14393.0.mum”

    Enable flash on windows server 2012r2

    dism /online /add-package /packagepath:”C:\Windows\servicing\Packages\Adobe-Flash-For-Windows-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.3.9600.16384.mum”

  34. Federico says

    October 18, 2017 at 3:38 pm

    Thank you so much, you save me a lot of time!!

  35. Rick says

    October 21, 2017 at 1:44 pm

    Thanks for this!

  36. ledba says

    January 2, 2018 at 1:39 pm

    Works fine, thanks a lot

  37. Anonymous says

    March 2, 2018 at 4:17 pm

    Great!

  38. Jonas says

    July 26, 2018 at 4:31 pm

    Same reason for me! https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started/getting-started-with-server-with-desktop-experience

  39. aj says

    September 20, 2019 at 4:01 am

    Thank you very much. Really help.

  40. Mahen says

    October 15, 2019 at 7:06 pm

    The Article still worth it.. resolved my issue following it.

    Thanks a lot!!

  41. Dinesh says

    December 10, 2019 at 6:20 am

    thank it helps a lot.

Trackbacks

  1. How to enable Flash Player on Windows Server 2016 - Tachytelic.net says:
    October 17, 2017 at 3:30 pm

    […] This procedure is significantly different from how the same task was done in Windows Server 2012. The instructions for installing Flash Player on Server 2012 are here. […]

  2. How to install Flash Player in Windows Server 2019 says:
    December 17, 2018 at 10:45 am

    […] Install Flash Player on Windows Server 2012 […]

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