Fix for Adobe Connect Add-In Failure

If you use Adobe Connect and use the Adobe Connect Add-in, you might have experienced some problems getting the add-in to work correctly. A common error is that the add-in appears to start loading correctly, then crashes silently.

We recently spent two hours one morning trying to track down the cause of this problem on a OS X Leopard Intel-chip machine. The add-in worked correctly on a number of other similar machines, and indeed worked fine on another account on the troubled machine, so we were able to isolate the problem to a specific user account on a specific machine.

First, we scoured the web to see if anyone reported a problem. This blog entry outlined identical behavior we had. This solution suggests manually removing the Adobe Connect files found in the folder:

~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/www.macromedia.com/bin/connectaddin6X0

Unfortunately, in our case, this approach did not fix the problem.

Next, in comparing the working accounts to the bad account, we noted that the parent Macromedia folder had a number of .sol files from various websites. These files are often called "Flash cookies," and are found in the #SharedObjects folder and macromedia.com folder.

We removed the #SharedObjects folder and macromedia.com folder and tried again. Suddenly the Adobe Connect Add-in worked properly! (These two folders will be immediately rebuilt by your next Adobe Connect connection, and with common web use will fill up again, populated by Flash objects on sites you visit.)

Evidently one of the .sols was causing a conflict with the Adobe Connect Add-in's ability to perform normally.

Without a full understanding of each user's needs for these folder and their contents, we caution against a brute force removal of these folders such as we did, but if you need the functionality of Adobe Connect Add-in, and the blog approach above doesn't work, we suggest you try this method.