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Wo archive tread sia. Meɖekuku bia biabia yeye ne ehia kpeɖeŋu.

Do I need Microsoft DRM or Windows Presentation Foundation plug-ins? Status is "unknown" and Action iis "research"

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sirromnelrah
sirromnelrah
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The last "update" in the community on this topic was 2011... has anything changed?? Are there any updates to these plugins if we need to keep them??

As these are significant Microsoft plugins, Mozilla should know about them... not a "Research" button.

The last "update" in the community on this topic was 2011... has anything changed?? Are there any updates to these plugins if we need to keep them?? As these are significant Microsoft plugins, Mozilla should know about them... not a "Research" button.

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Gingerbread Man
Gingerbread Man
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Microsoft DRM
It's very unlikely that you need it. It depends on the Windows Media Player plug-in, which is unmaintained and won't even install properly (though on Windows XP you'll find an old version is already installed). Most sites nowadays use either Flash Player ("Shockwave Flash") or HTML5 video and audio (support is built-in). A much smaller number use Silverlight.

Windows Presentation Foundation
It's very unlikely that you need it, unless you come across site that specifically tells you that you do. 

The WPF plug-in for Firefox enables XBAPs and loose XAML files to be navigated to and run at the top-level or in an HTML IFRAME in the Firefox browser. An XBAP is a WPF application that can be published to a Web server and launched within supported browsers. Loose XAML is a XAML-only file that can be navigated to and displayed in supported browsers, much like an XML file.

If you're referring to the Plugin Check page, you can report problems with it by filing a bug report. Classification: Other; Product: Websites; Component: plugins.mozilla.org. However, bug reports for the issues you describe already exist:

  • Bug 579282 - Plugin Check doesn't recognize Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) plugin
  • Bug 584824 - Unable to update Microsoft DRM plugin

The latter of the two bugs is marked as RESOLVED FIXED, so if you're getting an unknown plugin notice, post a comment on that bug report saying so.

On a related note, you have three different versions of Flash Player installed. You should perform a clean installation as follows:

  1. From the following page, save the uninstaller somewhere handy, like the desktop.
  2. From the following page, save the installer for other browsers. If you also use Flash Player in Internet Explorer, also save the ActiveX version.
  3. Exit all applications.
  4. Run the uninstaller.
  5. In Windows Explorer, try to open the following folders. If they still exist, delete them manually. 
    • C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\
    • C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash\
    • %AppData%\Adobe\Flash Player\
    • %AppData%\Macromedia\Flash Player\
  6. Restart your computer.
  7. Run the installer for other browsers.
  8. Run the ActiveX installer if you downloaded it.
cor-el
cor-el
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Also note that the Modified Preferences section in the System Details List shows a lot of preferences from older Firefox versions, so you can consider to delete a possible user.js file and numbered prefs-##.js files and rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in the current Firefox release.

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

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