Flipshare will not install with Windows 7 and Windows Media Player 12

Here is a xmas gotcha

I got a Flip Ultra HD camera for Orla this Xmas and went to install the software on my main PC this morning. I kept getting this error telling me that Windows Media Player was not installed and the installation failed.

My PC is running windows 7 Ultra 64bit and it has windows Media Player 12 installed so I could not see what the issue was. Others have mentioned that Flipshare did not support 64bit Windows but this was not mentioned on the requirements page so I kept looking.

I downloaded the version upgrade from the Flip site, I found that version 5.9 was the current version for me being based in the  UK (V5.10 is available for downloading in the US) the link for 5.9 was here:

http://www.theflip.com/en-gb/App/fvsw/5.9/update/

This version failed with the same error error, complaining that Windows Media Player was not installed. But it is!!

Not giving up, I grabbed Process Explorer from the sysinternals tool set here

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653

ran it and set up the filtering just to show anything with the word "flip" in the application name and other strings. I then ran the flip installer again through to the error popping up. I then looked back through the Process Explorer log and found that the installer was trying to open a reg key called

HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6}

Looking up 6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6 on Google, I found this related to Windows Media Player version 10 so I created the missing reg key ran the install again. This time it found the reg key and looked for an IsInstalled DWORD value, I added this, set it to one ran the install again and it worked.

Here is the contents of the key after I exported it from the registry

---------------------------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Active Setup\Installed Components\{6BF52A52-394A-11d3-B153-00C04F79FAA6}]
"IsInstalled"=dword:00000001

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copy the text above into notepad, save it as flip-fix.reg and import it into your registry.

Once you have installed Flipshare and rebooted the PC as part of the install process, you can remove this registry key and it all seems to work fine.

This is just what I did to get this application going, do this at your own risk!