Flash Player Support Experience thread

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

NOTE: This thread is NOT FOR DISCUSSION OF TECHNICAL ISSUES.
NOTE: This thread is NOT for discussion of an experience you had on this
forum. This forum is a user-to-user forum.

What is this thread for? Simple enough. If you've submitted a Flash Player
support email case and had a bad experience, this is the place to describe it.
If you have not submitted a case via [url]http://www.adobe.com/support[/url] please
don't post to this thread.

I'd ask that you provide as much detail as possible BUT please omit agent
names if at all possible. If you can provide the CASE NUMBER then I can have
someone investigate the problem. Case numbers should generally be in this
format: "172560273". If you're not comfortable posting that information then
private message it to me. I may not respond personally but I will assign
someone to check it out.

I'll check this thread as often as I can and have someone follow up whenever
possible.

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

-ping-. I'd like to keep this near the top so we can hear about anything new
coming up during the Creative Suite launch. Everybody seems to have a rant
about Adobe support, but no replies here so far!

[FordTech]

RE: Case 200208554

Bently, Below is the dialog for my case about a flash player download problem
that I had. As I stated in my April 5th response, It is very obvious that the
replies are automated and therefore not helpful. Another note: The response to
me on April 6th refered to me by the wrong name in the salutation. - I'm not
affended by that, It just backs up my comment about the automated, non-helpful
responses. I was finally able to download and install a standalone copy of
flash player via my 3meg hi-speed internet service in only 5.3 hours so I no
longer need tech support.

**Tech support dialog**

"Notes from Customer
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 2:02:10 PM PDT
The flash player download is extremely slow. Can you check your server please?

Notes to Customer
Thursday, April 5, 2007 4:23:03 PM PDT
Hello XXXX,

Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Service.

For your records, your customer ID number is XXXXXXXXX. The customer ID
number is the easiest way for us to access your account in our database.
In the future, please reference this number when you contact Adobe.

I understand that the flash player download is extremely slow.

Adobe Flash Player is a free Web player you can download.

To obtain your free Web Player download, please visit:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/downloads/[/url]

Find Flash Player product support and other services at:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/[/url]

Find information about Adobe product purchasing options, registration,
trials, upgrades, licensing, and other services at our Customer Service
Center:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/support/service/[/url].

For additional information about Adobe product purchasing options,
registration, trials, upgrades, licensing, and other services, please
visit our Customer Service Center at:
[url]http://www.adobe.com/support/service/[/url]

Best regards,

xxxx x.
Adobe Customer Service

Notes from Customer
Thursday, April 5, 2007 5:51:22 PM PDT
XXXX, I don't understand how your response is supposed to help me. It is
obvious how automated the response is...instead of personalized. If you
"understand that the flash player download is extremely slow." - I would think
you would want to fix that. Is Adobe lacking funds to support its products?


Notes to Customer
Friday, April 6, 2007 9:53:51 AM PDT
Hello XXXX,

Thank you for contacting Adobe Customer Service.

For your records, your customer ID number is XXXXXXXXX and case ID is
200208554. The customer ID and case ID number is the easiest way for us
to access your account in our database. In the future, please
reference this number when you contact Adobe.

Thank you for sharing your comments regarding Flash Player dowload being
extremely slow.

I forwarded your email to the appropriate team to further assist you
with your concerns. Your comments help us guide our ongoing efforts to
improve our products and services, so we thank you for taking the time
to send us your feedback.

Please have your case number available when you call. The case number is
listed in the subject box of your list of cases when you sign in to the
Support Portal, and also in the email notifications of updates to your
case.

Please feel free to contact us again if you have additional feedback or
concerns.

For more information on Adobe? products or services please visit us at:
[url]http://www.adobe.com[/url] or contact Adobe Customer Services at 1 (800)
833-6687. Customer Service Representatives are available 6:00am-8:00pm
PT, 7 days a week.


Best Regards
xxxxxx x.
Adobe Customer Service










Text

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

Thanks for that info FordTech. One thing that puzzles me here (that I have to
check out) is why this went through customer service. Flash Player support
requests are supposed to go directly to Tech Support!

It is true that the first response should be an autoreply. All that does is
confirm that you opened the case, and give you some general resources you might
be able to use to resolve the problem.

The April 5th reply would have been the first autoreply. It gets your name
from your Adobe.com account.

After that a human takes over.

Looking at the April 6th reply I can clearly see that someone called you by
the wrong name. Unfortunate. I'll follow up on that.

It seriously took 5 hours to download the standalone? That's unusual...

This is exactly the kind of info I'm looking for, I appreciate it!

[birnerseff]

Hi Bentley Wolfe,

great to see that someone is looking... I reported something similar to
[url]http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforums/forum/messageview.cfm?forumid=44&catid=18[/url]
4&threadid=1233705&enterthread=y
twice during beta, but only got an automated response. The sad truth - the
release version is still crashing like the beta ones

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

Thanks. I'm on my way out the door but I'll check it on Friday..

[birnerseff]

which one of these fridays?

regards
birnerseff

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

The next one..

If you reported that via the bug report form then you wouldn't be guaranteed
more than an autoresponse.

Is there any chance you opened a web case and have a case number? (since the
Linux player went public? ) If not you can still open one via
[url]http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer[/url]. Get me the case number and I can get
the crash more attention.

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

I keep hearing from people (on other threads) who opened Player cases but didn't get satisfactory responses. This is the place to post those case #'s for followup.

[birnerseff]

Hi,

I tried to follow your suggestion, but the button to submit the message leads
to
a nice 404 page showing the url
[url]https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/support/index.cfm?loc=en_us[/url].
So here is the message - maybe you can help feeding it into the system:

player does not work!
Opening flash content results in messages about gtk_clipboard, and within a
couple of seconds the browser closes.
System details: Suse linux 9.0, AMD CPU, ctwm window manager, alsa sound
Player versions tried: 9.0.21.55 and 9.0.21.78

Messages:
GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: gtype.c:1871: initialization assertion failed, use
g_type_init() prior to this function

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkclipboard.c: line 203
(gtk_clipboard_get_for_display): assertion `GDK_IS_DISPLAY (display)' failed
Adobe FlashPlayer: gtk_clipboard_get(GDK_SELECTION_PRIMARY); failed. Trying to
call gtk_init(0,0);

GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: gtype.c:1871: initialization assertion failed, use
g_type_init() prior to this function

Gtk-CRITICAL **: file gtkclipboard.c: line 203
(gtk_clipboard_get_for_display): assertion
`GDK_IS_DISPLAY (display)' failed
Adobe FlashPlayer: disabling GTK use since it can't be initialized.

I recall seeing repeated messages (if the thing ran a few more seconds, and
the site had sound) about problems accessing the sound device occasionally.

Regards
birnerseff

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

I'm asking Engineering to clarify, but I think this is fixed in the most recent 9.0.31.0 Linux Flash Player...

[birnerseff]

no real change, unfortunately :(

BTW: when I first sawthe beta, there was a companion desktop player. It did
not even start on my system, but did start on Suse 10.1 ... and get stuck once
forced into settings mode. Where could I download and test the finished version?

birnerseff

[Bentley Wolfe -ADOBE]

Here's what I was told... it's got something to do with the browser's support
of GTK (Gimp ToolKit)

Basically, Flash Player supports GTK2+ browsers only. GTK2+ is not compatible
with GTK+. The errors you see are common with a GTK+ browser.

Most recent browsers already ship with GTK2+ (firefox and seamonkey.) There
is a specific GTK2+ Mozilla 1.7.13 available also.

That's all the info I have (and I'm certainly not the Linux guru around
here...)

The standalone player comes with the Linux public player download. There are
some instructions for it but they're a bit sketchy. ON my (VMWare) Suse setup
it's just in the Flash folder and you have to launch it..

[birnerseff]

Hi,

I must admit that I had not noticed the GTK2+ bit in the system requirements.
In the meantime I installed seamonkey (its requirements say glib2.x, and
google told me that the one function it was missing was added in glib2.4, so I
had to upgrade glib)
Now - the difference: there are no longer any messages before flash crashes
the browser; so this is back to square one?

BTW: I recently installed realplayer 10, which also relies on gtk2+, and it
worked out of the box. I also tried to install the adobe reader ... another
fail.
Now requirements for adobe reader say Suse 9.2 or later where flash player
just asks for 9.x, and it additionally asks for kernel 2.6 and an intel
pentium, where flash player just requires a modern cpu. Maybe engineering can
clarify?

I am very sure that neither the current rpm nor the tar.gz package includes a
standalone player .... maybe yours was packaged with some other product?

Regards
birnerseff