A few days ago Adobe released a security update for Adobe Flash player and with that update Adobe also introduced a new mechanism for Flash Player updates. When deploying Adobe Flash player within a controlled corporate environment you most likely want to prevent the player from automatically updating itself or show notifications about a new version being available.
When installing Adobe Flash Player 11.2 you will find the following:
- A new Scheduled Task called Adobe Flash Player Updater
- A new Service called Adobe Flash Player Update Service
- The mms.cfg file located in C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash on 32-Bit systems or C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash on 64-Bit systems.
The mms.cfg isn’t a new thing, as it was actually already a common practice for Enterprise Administrators to deploy this file to prevent automatic updates, but it wasn’t installed by default, which is the case now.
Now I don’t have to rewrite in detail what others have already written, so to learn more about the new Adobe Flash Player Background Updater for Windows read this article.
Note that the mms.cfg file cannot only be used for configuring update behavior but also allows configuring other flash player settings. For more detail read the Adobe Flash Player Administrator Guide Page 21 – Summary of mms.cfg options.