14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe Flash Player 10.3 was recently launched, bringing some enhanced privacy controls, better voice chat technology and plenty of other improvements. For some Internet Explorer 9 users, it also brought a nasty bug. The bug is widespread enough that Adobe felt the need to write about it and offer affected users some help.
"We are tracking and actively investigating the issues reported with Flash Player 10.3 and Internet Explorer 9. Users are reporting that SWF content is being displayed in the upper left corner of the screen," Adobe revealed.
"First, we apologize to everyone affected — we know you count on Flash Player as an integral component of the web and we strive for high quality and performance in each release. We are actively looking into the root cause and best fix for this issue," it added.
The issue affects Internet Explorer 9 users only and is related to the hardware acceleration support built into the browser.
When IE9 launched, Adobe touted that its Flash Player plugin, version 10.2 at the time, also used IE9's hardware acceleration features, for greater performance during video playback, some animations and so on.
However, Adobe Flash Player 10.3 introduced a bug stemming from this feature. In particular, the bug is affecting users with a Intel HD Graphics video card, though Adobe isn't discounting the fact that other users may be affected as well.
For those affected by the issue, Adobe offers two temporary solutions. They're not optimal, but it's the best you can do until the company issues a Flash Player update.
The first possible fix is an obvious one, users are instructed to update their graphics card drivers. Apparently drivers newer than version 8.15.10.2361 should be working properly.
If you don't have an updated driver, you can also disable hardware acceleration altogether in IE9, again, not the greatest of solutions. However, Adobe should be issuing an update to Flash Player 10.3 soon to fix the issue for those affected.