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Does anyone know how to purposefully cause Flash to crash in Internet Explorer by killing something (i.e. process or plugin container) from the command line? I know how to kill processes remotely and have admin rights inside my lab, however, I cannot figure out how to crash Flash running in IE.

Details: I teach high school students and am not shy about closing programs they have open that have nothing to do with the work they're supposed to be doing. Closing processes like IExplore.exe and Firefox.exe is easy. However, sometimes, I don't want to kill IE outright because the student may be using it on a legitimate assignment, but I do want to kill the Flash game they've wandered on to in another tab. And, I don't want to disable Flash altogether because sometimes, it is necessary for legitimate work. I guess you can say I want to deliver precision strikes to Flash running in IE.

It's easy to kill the Flash container in Firefox by killing the plugin_container.exe process, but so far, I've been unable to figure out (or find) how to do this in IE.

(Please don't try to give me a lesson on controlling my class. If I don't have the support of administration to enforce rules and punish students for undesirable behavior, my process killing is the only way to keep a lot of the students focused. And no, rewards for good behavior don't always work either.)

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Wouldn't it be easier just to filter flash game sites (or at least the most common ones)? – MaQleod Oct 3 '11 at 18:55
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IE hosts Flash in a(nother) IExplorer.exe process, so it won' tbe as easy to distinguish. Also, keep in mind that the Plugin_Container.exe process for FF also hosts Silverlight, and Quicktime (as well as others), so you may not 'just' be killing flash when you target that EXE. You are bumping into a people problem, which you are trying to handle by technical means - and that almost never goes well; often ends up similar digging a hole in loose sand. :) – techie007 Oct 3 '11 at 18:57
@MaQleod I don't have access to the proxy blacklists and am not allowed to setup my own proxy solution. – Trav Oct 3 '11 at 21:42
@techie007 You have a good point about plugin_container. And you are right about this being a people problem, but alas, killing processes is the best defense I have against students who won't do what I ask given the environment in which I teach. – Trav Oct 3 '11 at 21:47

1 Answer

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Tools -> Internet Options -> Program Tab -> Manage add-on options button -> Filters -> Add-ons that run without requiring permission -> Select Shockwave Object -> Click Disable button at bottom.

You can follow these steps for crashing other plugins too.

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