Adobe Flash player is a cross platform browser based application runtime that delivers high quality multimedia content like animation and video. It has been optimized for mobiles in its latest avatar and is designed to take advantage of native device capabilities to provide enhanced user experience via support for multi-touch, accelerometer, gestures etc. You may find yourself running into “Sorry, your platform is not supported” when running Windows Vista 64 bit.
So, what is the problem?
It may sound surprising but when you are confronted with the “Sorry, your platform is not supported” error the problem is not that Windows Vista 64 bit is not supported but that the 64 bit Internet Explorer bundled in the same operating system is not supported. You can however install and run Adobe Flash Player for the 32 bit Internet Explorer included with Windows Vista. As of now Adobe is working on the release of a native 64 bit flash player for the desktop.
Flash player on 64 bit Windows Vista with IE
When you point to Start > All Programs, you may find multiple icons for Internet Explorer. Choose the one that says only “Internet Explorer” to start the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer on Windows Vista. Once the browser has started you may re-confirm you have the right version from the Help Menu by selecting About Internet Explorer. You should not see “64-bit Edition” next to the version number. Now head to http://get.adobe.com/flashplayerand download the installer for flash player. Your browser is flash ready after the install completes successfully.
Flash player on 64 bit Windows Vista with other browsers
To use flash player from another non-IE browser from within a 64 bit Windows Vista, download and install the 32 bit version of the browser from the vendor’s website e.g. http://www.mozilla.org/firefox for Mozilla Firefox browser. Once you have the 32 bit browser in place on the operating system, you may grab a copy of the installer from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer and once you are through with the install you are ready to experience the multimedia enabled web.
It is important to realize that 64 bit software is coded differently from 32 bit software and there should be architectural compatibility between the software and the hardware you are trying to run it on. Mostly 32 bit software runs on 64 bit hardware through a transparent compatibility layer. Once this basic concept is understood it is easy to see the logic behind this work around.
