In the past, I've had trouble installing the Macromedia Shockwave Player on this particular Win2k box. Flash install always works, but Shockwave doesn't.

Deal is: They have a little "stub" installer program that gets run from the web site. Then that "stub" is supposed to connect to the web and grab the rest of the files. Problem is, that stub file always locks up on my system and I have to task-kill it.

Once upon a time, I'd found a way to get the Shockwave installer to work on my box. I think somewhere I found a full installer, but that was several versions ago. And I can't seem to find one now. Anyone have any idea how to get this thing to install without running that buggy/incompatible little installer stub?

Would this help?

Yup, that is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

What really frosts me, though, is that page isn't linked anywhere from the actual "troubleshooting" pages at the site for the macromedia player installs. Every link I followed that was supposed to help me troubleshoot the shockwave installation, pointed me to the regular piece-of-shit streaming web installer.

Wanna know the real kicker, though?

Although I did get Shockwave installed again, I now see the root of the problem that caused me to get into this mess in the first place:

C:\Win2k\system32\Macromed\Shockwave 8\Dirapi.dll.

See... here's what happens. When I run a Flash program, the links don't work. I can't do any "navigation" from within a flash program. When I try to click on something, IE closes down.

I look up a Microsoft KB article, which says it's a problem with Dirapi.dll. So I deinstall both Flash and Shockwave and reinstall Flash. Flash links work again. Note that with just Flash installed, Dirapi.dll doesn't exist on my hard disk and all is well.

Then I install Shockwave again. It installs Dirapi.dll. Flash quits working again. I hand-delete Dirapi.dll, and Flash works again.

But then when I run a Shockwave program, it auto-downloads Dirapi.dll and puts it into place. So each time I run Shockwave, I break Flash.

Sorry, that's just complete bullshit. Macromedia's own two programs don't cooperate with each other. Macromedia can just bite me.

I hate software.