Thursday 5 August 2010

Install Flash in Google Chrome Portable without Admin Rights

If you need to install Chrome and you don't have admin rights on your windows machine, then the best thing to do is to use a portable version, available from portableapps.com :

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

You can put this anywhere on your machine or even on a usb stick.

However if you want to use sites like youtube or google streetview, you will need Adobe Flash Player. As you don't have admin rights you will not be able to run the standard abobe installer.

This is what you need to do instead:

1. Download this file from Adobe: http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/xpi/current/flashplayer-win.xpi

2. Rename the file extenion from .xpi to .zip

3. Use an unzip program like winzip or 7-zip to extract the contents

4. Copy the files flashplayer.xpt and NPSWF32.dll from the contents of the zip to the folder \App\Chrome-Bin\5.0.375.55\Plugins

This will be where you installed Google Chrome and the 5.0.365.55 folder might be named differently.

5. Restart Chrome and enter this in the address bar: about:plugins . You should see Shockwave Flash listed as a plugin.

6. Try out youtube.com

These instructions are kind of based on:
http://eurekatips.com/2009/05/05/flash-google-chrome-manual-permission-portable/724/