This is definitely worth updating, if only for the security fixes:
Adobe Flash Player version 10.0.12.36
You might want to uninstall Flash Player v9 first.
Alas, still no support for 64-bit browsers. Adobe says they’re “working on Flash Player support for 64-bit platforms” and will deliver it in “an upcoming release of Flash Player following Flash Player 10.”
Flash Player 10 works with IE 6/7 (and IE8 Beta 2, I can confirm), as well as Firefox 2 and 3, on all Windows versions. AOL 9 and Safari 3 are supported on desktop platforms but not on Windows Server 2003. Opera users, you’re OK if you use XP or Windows 2000 but apparently out of luck not officially supported if you use Vista or any Windows Server edition.
Update: In the comments, Danny notes that he has installed Flash Player 10 on a system running Opera 9.60 and Vista Ultimate SP1 and it works just fine. Thanks, Danny!
Update 2: Ars Technica has run some performance tests:
As the numbers will show, Flash performs far better in Vista versus Mac OS X running on the same hardware, and it actually improved slightly with the version 10 update.
Imagine that.
Justin (and others with problem with IE7 or-8 not playing flash content in only one user account, when other browsers will play flash content in the affected account):
Microsoft finaly helped me fix this one in my Vista user account. These were their instructions:
(Snip)
Step 1: Show hidden files
===================
1. Click “Start” and then click “Control Panel”.
2. In the left pane of Control Panel, click “Control Panel Home”.
3. Click “Appearance and Personalization”.
4. Click “Folder Options”.
5. Click the “View” tab, click “Show hidden files and folders”, and then click OK.
Step 2: Remove old profile files
=======================
1. Navigate to the C:\Users\(user name) folder.
2. Delete the following files: NTUSER.DAT,NUSER.DATA{ 0f6…} ntuser.ini
3. Navigate to the C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\Temp folder, and remove all files in the Temp folder.
4. Navigate to the C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows folder, and remove all the UserClass.dat files.
Restart the computer and log on the current user account again.
(Unsnip)
Microsoft forgot a couple of things.
1) You must do the deletes from another acct., since they won’t be deletable from your own acct, since some of them will be in use…
2) You must also unhide system files, as some of the ones to delete are such.
3) Where Microsoft says to remove all files in a directory, they mean only files, NOT folders in that directory.
I believe that the one thing which worked out of their instructions, since I did them a piece at a time, was the deletion of the UserClass.dat files in the affected user account. It was after this step that IE finally began to be able to play flash content without ’starting as administrator’, or disabling protection mode. I suspect you could do only this step and be back in good shape. Incidently, these files were recreated immediately after reboot, apparently without the boo-boo that at least one of them had had for so long. Linney, let me know if this works for you. They’re a few others out there who need this fix if so. Hope this helps!