HP Digital Imaging Monitor doesn't work & shows a blank screen with an "F" & "i" logo (Flash player)

[wstack]

This work around gives you scanning capabilities

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Scanning-Faxing-Copying/HP-Solution-Center-does-not-work/m-p/7933933#M...

[Tig77]

---

@Genuine_Curious wrote:

Worked for me, except the disabling of the Adobe Flash Player Updater. It was not even installed.

Only drawback is that we now have a very old Flash Player ActiveX control installed (2009), which opens many security holes. I really hope HP comes upp with a solution to run HP Solution Center in a safe way!

---

I'm glad you were able to get it working.  Be sure to disable or remove the 2009 Flash Player from any web browsers you have, that should mitigate most security risks to your system.

I would have to think that even uninstalling and reinstalling the HP Solutions Center / HP Digital Imaging Monitor software should cause an older version of Flash Player to be installed anyway, since the program needs it to operate.  The biggest vector of security risk by far is your web browsers use of Flash.

[Amelibie24]

Merci T 77,le changement de date fonctionne parfaitement. nous allons faire avec en attendant une solution de HP. Cordialement

[TBOD]

Worked perfectly! Thank you so much for posting this! 

[Joasch]

I've had the same problem using my PSC 1417 printer /scanner, the HP Solution also gave F and i.   Still using my old desktop Windows 7 32bit (old processor doesn't run W10) and don't want throw away a good working printer because I'm using it a lot for creating PDF. Following our steps by deleting the Flash Player worked and found a download using 

https://blog.techygeekshome.info/wpdm-package/adobe-flash-player-msi-package-v24-0-0-186/

[bgs2]

as I don't do a lot of scanning - the suggestion to set the clock back was by far the easiest and fast quick fix

thanks for that suggestion

[PeachyKean]

I had to replace my black ink cartridge and was not able to align the cartridge.  The printer kept printing the test page, but I could not print anything else.  I set my computer date to before January 12th and was then able to check my ink levels, align the cartridge and print.  THANK YOU !! for this suggestion!!  I thought my only recourse would be to buy another printer.

[grethjc]

By HP - time for a new printer/scanner.  Can't believe the solution is to reinstall an older version of flash

[robg57]

I also got Solution Center working, in Windows 10 64 bit version 20H2 (Oct 2020 version), with a similar approach to JIM412 but with fewer steps.  This should also work for Windows 8 and 9.

1.  (like above Step 1) - Download and run the Adobe Flash Uninstaller from Adobe.  Removal instructions and download link provided on the page noted: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html 
2. (like above Step 2) - Restart the computer.
3. (like above Step 3) - That Adobe page describes that you should find and remove 4 folders of files after the uninstall.  They are C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash, C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash, %appdata%\Adobe\Flash Player,  and %appdata%\Macromedia\Flash Player.
   • on one of my computers, these 4 folders were all removed by the uninstall and restart action itself.
   • on the other computer, the 2 folders under C:\WIndows were removed already but the ones in %appdata% were not. I removed those 2 folders manually (my user account has local administrator privileges).
   • In my case the %appdata% system variable value translated to C:\Users\<MyUserName>\AppData\Roaming, which is a normally hidden system folder.  You may need to set your Windows Explorer options to "view hidden folders".
4. (like above Step 7) Uninstall the Adobe Flash that is embedded in Internet Explorer and Microsoft Edge (I skipped his "uninstall Internet Explorer 11" steps).
   • As described, determine your version of Windows 8, 9, or 10 (I have version 10 - 20H2), and then go to the Microsoft Update page noted to download the appropriate Flash Uninstaller patch (patch for KB4577586): http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=4577586 
5. (like above) Run the downloaded xxx.MSU file.  The wording is a bit odd, because it asks you to confirm that you want to install the patch which itself is an un-installer.  But yes, you do want to do that.
6. (like above) Restart your computer.  You probably don't have to restart here, but I did just to be sure.
7. At this point you will have no installations of Adobe Flash left anywhere that a browser knows about.  You can test this hypothesis by opening each of your browsers in turn to this Adobe page: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html  This has a big yellow "Check Now" button.  None should succeed.

SO ... now you want to re-install a version of Adobe Flash just for your HP Solution Center to use.  Instead of re-installing the Solution Center software (like JIM412 did) I just pulled in a old version of Flashplayer itself.  This has to be new enough for the HP software to accept it, but old enough that it isn't looking for Internet Explorer 11 during the install nor crippled by the Jan 2021 Flash drop dead date.  
My magic Goldilocks version turned out to be Flashplayer 11.3.300.257.  I am running an HP C8180 printer driver version 14.0 originally released back in 2012.

The original message in this overall thread, as posted by Tig77 (here: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Printer-Setup-Software-Drivers/HP-Digital-Imaging-Monitor-doesn-t-work... ) describes getting and installing an old version of Flashplayer from an Internet Archive page to cure things under Windows 7.  That's where I went too.

1. Go to the Internet Archive's page that has an archived the list of all Flashplayer versions as was posted by Adobe (the page has since been removed by Adobe), page is here: https://archive.org/details/flashplayerarchivedversions2 
2. On that page, scroll down and click the ZIP link to show you the list of 278 archived versions.  Scroll that list to the "fp_11.3.300.257_archive.zip" link and download that zip file.  The direct URL is: https://archive.org/download/flashplayerarchivedversions2/downloads/202/fp_11.3.300.257_archive.zip 
3. (as per Tig77 msg) Unzip the downloaded file.  In the 11_3_300_257 folder -- NOT the xxx_debug folder -- you will find the flashplayer11_3r300_257_winax.exe file. 
   • Make sure to use the WINAX variant.  As noted, this is the ActiveX version of Adobe Flash Player (as used by Internet Explorer) which is the one that is used by the HP Digital Imaging Monitor and HP Solution Center.
4. Run that winax.exe file.  It will ask if you're sure you want to (yes you are).
   It will pop up a box asking about "Check for updates".  Be sure to select "Never check for updates (Not recommended)" so that it won't update to the latest version and get disabled again!
   • If you missed this step (you clicked past the pop-up), you can go to Control Panel > Flash Player and in those settings you can turn off AutoUpdate forever.

That's it. You can now open HP Solution Center and it works a charm.

[William_Redingt · Accepted solution]

Method 1 - You can remove the time bomb on flash manually using a hex editor program like HxD (https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/), searching the hex string "00 00 40 46 3E 6F 77 42" and replacing with "00 00 00 00 00 00 FF 7F".

links: gist.github.com/KuromeSan/56d8b724c0696b54f9f81994ae3591d1

           http://cache.tehsausage.com/flash/defuse.txt

Here are the paths of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX version:

C:\Windows\System32\Macromed\Flash\Flash64_32_0_0_465.ocx

C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\Flash32_32_0_0_465.ocx

The name of the files can be different, just check if it has the extension .ocx

Copy to the desktop, edit it from there, and paste it back again.

Before paste, close any application that uses flash, like Internet Explorer or HP Solution Center.

You need administrator rights to paste into the System32 and SysWOW64 dir.

Method 2 - Or you can uninstall your current flash version using the uninstall program from Adobe:

https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/support/uninstall_flash_player.exe

or download the archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210202035540/http:/fpdownload.macromedia.com/get/flashplayer/current/s...

And then download the last Adobe Flash Player ActiveX version without the time bomb (32.0.0.371):

direct link to the ActiveX version 32.0.0.371 hosted by archive.org: flashplayer32_0r0_371_winax.exe

link to other versions: https://archive.org/download/flashplayerarchive/pub/flashplayer/installers/archive/

Install the file "flashplayer32_0r0_371_winax.exe", but if you are using Windows 8 or 10 you need to run in compatibility mode Windows 7.

To run in compatibility mode, you need right click the executable file -> select Properties -> Compatibility -> Compatibility mode -> Run this program in compatibility mode for: -> Select Windows 7 -> Then Ok. -> Execute the program.

Method 3 - Or download the last Adobe Flash Player ActiveX version (32.0.0.465) from Adobe's site:

https://fpdownload.adobe.com/pub/flashplayer/latest/help/install_flash_player_ax.exe

or download the archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20210124174321/https:/fpdownload.adobe.com/pub/flashplayer/latest/help/i...

Install it, but if you are using Windows 8 or 10 you need to run in compatibility mode Windows 7.

And remove the time bomb using a patcher like:

https://github.com/KuromeSan/FlashPatcher/releases

https://github.com/j-frei/HPFlashFix

or use other trusted patches around, or remove the time bomb manually using the method that I mentioned above.

But remember, keeping a working version of Adobe Flash Player ActiveX after the EOL leaves supported browsers as Internet Explorer and your computer vulnerable to attacks using Flash applications. You can also disable the extension of Adobe Flash Player inside the Internet Explorer.

Method 4 - Change your computer date before the EOL (2021-01-12).

But this method will allow other versions of Adobe Flash Player keep working as Pepper Plugin Application Programming Interface (PPAPI) and Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface (NPAPI), leaving others browsers vulnerable to attacks if they still support Adobe Flash Player Plugin.

Method 5 - Run your application using RunAsDate: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/run_as_date.html using a date before the EOL (2021-01-12).