latest Flash version crashing both Firefox and IE

Hello.

Been using Flash in both IE and Firefox for years with no major problems until the last update a little over a week ago. Now, whenever I am watching video for more than about 5 minutes, the process for either browser's memory grows steadily way way up from where it normally is - and where it started (and where it used to stay) - and eventually crashes the player, the browser and freezes the entire computer. I have tried uninstalling and re-installing Flash and it hasn't helped. I stopped using Explorer a long time ago and switched to Firefox but went back and checked to see if it would be any different using that browser -figuring it might just be a Firefox issue, but the same thing happens. So I just downloaded Chrome and will try and see what happens with that - but am very troubled, since this has caused me great unhappiness and stress over the last week.

So the problems seem to be with 15.0.0.152 / 167

Any suggestions? Is this a known issue? Thanks.

Windows XP - all up to date. No other issues. System is fine. Have run all sorts of system checks and malware scans and it shows up clean.

Thanks again.