Adobe flash updater appears to lock user profile files in Windows 7

Question

Hello All,
I don't own any Adobe products, but I wanted to put this up so that others who run into this issue can find it, and hopefully Adobe will look into it if it's common.
This evening, I had just restarted my computer (Windows 7 RC), and after an usually long load time, I found myself loading into a profile other than my own.  Windows informed me that it has been unable to access my user profile and so had booted me into a temporary profile.  I noticed that the reason for being unable to access the profile was that it was being accessed (locked) by another program.  I rebooted.
This time when I logged in, I was taken to my own profile, but before it loaded, I received a message from windows stating that it has been unable to open the user profile, and at the same time I saw a prompt from the Adobe Updater asking me if I wanted to upgrade to the next version of Adobe Flash.  After closing the dialogs, my profile contained everything for my desktop, but my windows settings appeared to have all been disabled (meaning Windows Aero was turned off and everything looked...odd--like an older version of windows squeezed into the updated Windows 7 interface).
Taking a guess that the prompt from the Adobe updater may have been responsible for locking the profile while it was awaiting a response (somehow I guess it was running BEFORE windows loaded the user profile), I uninstalled all my adobe products and rebooted.
Issue solved. Presumably, installing the update when you first see the prompt and not waiting for another time after a reboot would also bypass this issue.
So it appears that the Update prompt locks the Windows user profile in Windows 7, which causes a problem because (maybe only on machines that don't auto login?) it appears to run before the profile loads: so it has a user profile file locked waiting for a response from the user, which can't come because the profile hasn't been loaded by Windows (so the user can't see the prompt), but Windows can't load the profile because the file is locked...sort of a soft dead lock (since I was sort of able to get in eventually).
Wanted to get this out, and was also wondering if anyone else has seen this issue.
Cheers,
-jfc

Answer 1

Trying to install FB 4.5 - comes up with this error on my machine - anyone have any concrete ideas on how to overcome this...
I've tried rebooting, removing activex plugins etc but of no help....
WARNING: DW031: Payload:{650C9D09-D5BD-4532-8BEE-01DBC1DF5537} Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 4.5.0.0 has been updated and has been selected for repair. The patch {CEAC4FFA-E7DE-4434-890A-F0AC7792DE5E} Adobe Flash Builder 4.5_4.5.1_AdobeFlashBuilder-mul 4.5.1.0 will be uninstalled now.
WARNING: DW031: Payload:{650C9D09-D5BD-4532-8BEE-01DBC1DF5537} Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 4.5.0.0 has been updated and has been selected for repair. The patch {CEAC4FFA-E7DE-4434-890A-F0AC7792DE5E} Adobe Flash Builder 4.5_4.5.1_AdobeFlashBuilder-mul 4.5.1.0 will be uninstalled now.
----------- Payload: {551D0A52-5E4A-4898-9FFF-FEAA5E89585A} Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX 10.0.0.0 -----------
ERROR: Error 1722.There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action NewCustomAction1, location: C:\DOCUME~1\nanunh\LOCALS~1\Temp\InstallAX.exe, command: -install activex -msi
ERROR: Install MSI payload failed with error: 1603 - Fatal error during installation.
MSI Error message: Error 1722.There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A program run as part of the setup did not finish as expected. Contact your support personnel or package vendor. Action NewCustomAction1, location: C:\DOCUME~1\nanunh\LOCALS~1\Temp\InstallAX.exe, command: -install activex -msi
ERROR: DW050: The following payload errors were found during install:
ERROR: DW050:  - Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX: Install failed
Please search the above error/warning string(s) to find when the error occurred.
These errors resulted in installer Exit Code mentioned below.
Exit Code: 6 - Silent workflow completed with errors.
[    1460] Mon Aug 15 17:52:20 2011  INFO
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