Flash based screensaver is hanging computers

Question

Clients are Windows 7 x64. Flash version is 20.0.0.306, but problem has persisted in all recent v20 releases.

We have a screen saver that is built using a tool that convers PowerPoint presentations to Flash based screensavers - the tool is Flashpoint Pro.

We have the screensaver deployed to about 5000 client systems. We have been receiving dozens of calls per day that the computer is frozen and will not break out of the screen saver with a mouse waggle or keyboard press. The computer is easily responsive from remote management. We can remote control the computer and when sending a ctrl-alt-delete, the computer will usually flip to the usual screen you see when you hit ctrl-alt-delete. If you just hit cancel on that screen, you get dropped back to the desktop and everything appears to be fine. We have been using this system for screensavers for the last several years without a problem. The problems first started with an update to Flash v20. After the update we were having many machines that would show a blank white screen instead of the screen saver content. An update to both the screen saver creation software and to the Flash player made this problem go away. However we are left with this problem of occasionally unresponsive computers while the flash based screensaver is playing. I am unable to reproduce the problem on my own test systems and have been unable to find a commonality among the machines that do and do not have the issue. The same machine might enter and exit the screen saver cycle successfully several times in a row only to freeze minutes into a subsequent screensaver cycle. Once unfrozen that machine might be fine for the rest of the day.

It is definitely related to Flash and the screensaver. If I replace the flash based screensaver with the "blank" scr file that comes with Windows, the machine has no trouble cycling out of the screensaver.

I have rebuilt the screensaver several times and on different computers but it is always the same result. It tests out OK on my own computer, but when deployed to 5000+ computers it fails on several dozen of them each day.

Does anyone have any ideas for what I might try?

jeromiec83223024 · Answer

I've been working on Flash for about a decade at this point, and I'm still constantly surprised by how many use-cases Flash shows up in.

The most straightforward way to figure it out would probably be to reproduce the problem under a c++ debugger (although that in and of itself will be an interesting exercise). If you have a .scr file that demonstrates the issue, file a bug here: http://bugbase.adobe.com/. If you reply to this thread with the bug number, I'll get an email notification, and will open it to the team for investigation.

If the problem is on the Flash Player side, my guess is that this is a side-effect of security hardening. I'm sure they're doing some creative stuff to get a browser plug-in running inside a windows screensaver, and the low level work we're doing to harden Flash Player against malicious actors may be making for some interesting engineering challenges. If the folks on Flashpoint Pro have some more detailed API level observations to share, that would probably be very useful. They're welcome to direct message me (just click my name), and I'd be happy to get a conversation going.

Thanks!

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