Our journey to speed up your PC by not installing software continues.
Let’s uninstall Adobe Flash and still be able to use it. This tutorial doesn’t require administrative privileges to get Adobe Flash running, which may be important if you’re not an administrator user of the computer (at work or at school).
Modern packages like Java, Flash, Silverlight, etc. have evolved from mere utilities to utter bloatware, filled with advertisement and sending data to their creators’ websites. The autoupdate feature, for instance, pings the developer’s website on a regular basis, which is a perfect means to gather usage statistics, along with operating system and browser used.
The packages also pollute you computer with hundreds of small files and dozens of registry entries, decreasing Windows performance and causing various glitches.
One may think that this is essential for sophisticated software to operate, but the fact is: it’s not.
The only file you need to run Flash in Firefox, is NPSWF….dll. Yes, that’s right, out of a couple dozen megabytes of Adobe Flash install, the only file needed is just under 30mb.
The easiest way to get the freshest version of it, is installing Flash, searching for NPSWF*.dll (usually, the path is C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\ for 64bit and C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\ for 32bit version) and copying the file to another location, and then uninstalling Flash. Or you may just download it here, but it may be a previous version.
The package includes both 32bit and 64bit versions.
Later versions of Adobe Flash also require FlashPlayerPlugin_….exe , so copy it also.
Now, copy the files to \Data\plugins\ of your Firefox portable installation. Restart Firefox and you’re done.
This should also work for common (non-portable) Firefox install, just locate the right plugins folder.