Is Flash CS4 crashing when you try to open an FLA? Are you pulling out your hair wondering why Flex 3 doesn’t auto complete BitmapData? Adobe Updater may be the answer.

Flash CS4 10.0.2

One of my co-workers called me over to troubleshoot when a folder full of FLAs were crashing Flash CS4 every time he tried to open them. He had already tried a fresh install of the software and had all of the necessary fonts. So why did it crash? Well it turns out that Flash CS4 had a bug where it would crash when embedded fonts are used.

“FLA crash on open when fonts loaded.” –Glavan on Flash (detailed list of what was fixed)

After running Adobe Updater everything worked great!

Flex Builder 3.0.2

How about Flex Builder? I recently installed Windows 7 with a fresh copy of Flex Builder 3 Professional. Unfortunately I pulled the install from one of my external hard drives and it was version 3.0.1 rather than 3.0.2. A major bug with version 3.0.1 using SDK 3.3 and higher is that BitmapData does not auto complete. After trying multiple versions of the SDK I finally found the bug report on Adobe Bugs citing that the problem was fixed in version 3.0.2.

After running Adobe Updater everything worked great!

See the common theme here? I tend to disable most of the automatic software updates since they are usually very annoying. After my experiences over the past week I will be checking Adobe Updater much more frequently! Always update after a fresh install.