iPlayer not working - Adobe Air update to blame

Since a few of the search results that lead people to view this site appear to be related to my posts about BBC iPlayer troubles, here is another problem that I have encountered.

Before going on holiday outside of the UK, I tried downloading a few programmes on the iPlayer on my Mac laptop.  After a few seconds each download attempt would fail.

Fortunately this was a known issue, and the BBC site has a workaround:

http://iplayerhelp.external.bbc.co.uk/help/announcements/ipd_air_contentdisappear

Basically it involves uninstalling the currently installed version of Adobe AIR and installing an older version.

BBC iPlayer Desktop Troubleshooting

A few days ago I noticed that the BBC iPlayer application on my laptop would not display the programme listing for downloaded programmes.

I went online to see that several other people have reported the same issue.

Re-installing the application made no difference.

Then I remembered that the external drive which I use for storing media files had disconnected unexpectedly recently, I considered that some files may have been partially written.  Sure enough, when I moved the most recently modified files out of the iPlayer repository the programmes lists started working again.

Update:
Without accidentally disconnecting the drive or shutting anything down in an abrupt manner, my iPlayer installation suffered a repeat of the programmes list problem again.

I'm too busy to bother tracing the exact cause, but if it happens again I will try to isolate what specific download directory is causing this issue.