Today I tried to install the Adobe Flash Plugin for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The basic idea was to download the executable, run it and have Flash installed. The problem was that somehow the whole process got corrupted which had several consequences. The Flash Player installation running in the background was creating new temporary Flash executables in the temporary cache directory. When I tried to terminate the process via Windows Task Manager I received the message that access was denied. This happened with the online installer. I received the message “Unable to Terminate Process The operation could not be completed The operation is not valid for this process”.

I’m not sure what caused the issue, but what I did know was that I had to stop the installer from creating new Flash installer instances on my computer. With Windows Task Manager out of the picture, I had to find a way to terminate the process.