Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Flash Player and Pentium 2 CPUs don't play nice together

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | July 7, 2008, 12:46pm PDT

Not sure how many of you this will affect, but it’s well worth keeping in mind if you run the Flash Player on a PC built around the Pentium 2 processor.

Flash Player and Pentium 2 CPUs do not play nice together It seems that Flash Player 9.0.115.0 to 9.0.124.0 crashes without fail under the following circumstances:

Steps to reproduce:
1. Open any webpage with an embedded flash in any browser running on a Pentium 2 processor.

Actual Results:
Invalid instruction application exception.

Expected Results:
Just work

Workaround (if any):
None

It appears unconditional SSE instructions have been compiled into the flash player since r115, causing flash to crash.

According to Adobe’s own system requirements for Flash Player, the applications should play nicely with a Pentium II 450MHz or faster.

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Intel Pentium, Macromedia Flash Player, CPU, Processors, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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RE: Flash Player and Pentium 2 CPUs don't play nice together

caspere 22nd Jul 2008

This isn't just Pentium II or other outmoded systems. I am running Vista Ultimate x86 with a Pentium 4, 3.2 GHz, and 4 GB, DDR 3 RAM, and a Radeon 2600, 1 GB graphics card.
Not an old beat down system.
It crashes everytime I go to a site with Flash, but this only began to happen since last Wednesday when I finally gave into the annoying pop-up to upgrade my adobe player build.

No I can't do any of my work if it deals with flash, nor can I even visit any site that has embedded flash.

I am not alone in this as I have seen this THOUSANDS of times on different BBS, and not just concerning Pent. II, or outdated systems.

I purged my system and re-installed numerous times, and I have contacted Adobe- whose reaction was limited to..."hunh, well...ok".

What am I supposed to do? I can go to a previoud version, but I just need the previous build.

Is that possible?
Is there another fix, other than reverting to version 8?

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Not just flash and not just P2

cornpie 7th Jul 2008

Pentium II cpu's are not the only one's that might still be out there that don't support SSE. The AMD K-6 series which was contemporary with the P2 and the early Athlon's (contemporary with the P3) also don't support it.

Also, from what I've been reading, Microsoft's Silverlight also uses SSE and will not run on these older CPU's

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Confirm K6

maalmike@... 7th Jul 2008

I still have a K6 runnig xubuntu, and it crashes with flash player (using the player that adobe gives for linux)

But not in every page (you tube goes just fine) but others (like my favorte rock band) just crashes.

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A reason not to run Flash 9 on an older CPU

DonRupertBitByte 7th Jul 2008

Websites that use any of the Flash 3D engines would not run at all on a system that slow...

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RE: Flash Player and Pentium 2/3 CPUs don't play nice together

21_years_IT Updated - 8th Jul 2008

Their security bulletins say that anything Flash player below 9.0.124.0 is insecure. That would mean that any Pentium II or Pentium 3 PC that is running Flash version 8 is insecure and can be taken over.
They haven't indicated that they intend to update version 8 for older PCs so they are in effect saying that they do not care if anyone running a P2/3 gets infected and becomes a spam open relay or bot PC.

Update: I found that there is a version 8.0.42.0 available in their fp8_archive.zip (http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/installers/archive/fp8_archive.zip ) and it was created 4-8-08 so it may be secure because their security bulletin reports that 8.0.39.0 and before is insecure.
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb08-11.html

They do not seem to be making it available as an easy to find download though which they really should be doing so that PII/3 computers can be secure and not get infected and become botnet victims.