Ok, I first want to apologize if this problem has been
answered and fixed before, but I have spent days pouring over
forums, and I still can not fix my problem. It requires a little
bit of background first:
I can't remember how long ago it started, but whenever I am
viewing a flash file (a game, videos from youtube, advertisements,
etc.) My CPU usage increases to 99-100% and remains there until I
close the program that is running it, or go to a different webpage.
I normally use firefox, so for the longest time I was searching for
the problem relating to firefox exclusively. I came across
FlashBlock, and I still use it in Firefox. However, this is not a
SOLUTION to the problem, just a "work around." If I actually want
to view the flash content - bye bye CPU usage.
So for the longest time I focused on firefox. I completely
uninstalled and removed flash and firefox from my computer, and
reinstalled. I even tried it with an older version of flash,
because I can't remember always having this problem, and the
problem persisted. But now I have everything up to date, and the
problem is still there.
Then I decided to use IE for a little bit because I was upset
at Firefox. I was surprised when I was on youtube, or playing a
flash game, that my CPU went up to 100% and remained there. SO
instead of googling "flash firefox cpu" I just googled "flash cpu"
and I have been doing some research/experimenting. I am - by no
means - a very technical person or a programmer, I am an ordinary
user that is upset about this problem. I went to this page
http://www.bezzmedia.com/swfspot/samples/beginner/Show_the_Current_Frames_Per_Second
and watched my cpu usage go up to 100. But when the animation goes
to a lower fps, from about 1-5, my cpu usage goes down, but only to
about 80. So what happens is I can do control-alt-delete and watch
the performance tab's graph. After letting it run for a while, I
get almost an perfect, symmetrical mountainous "landscape" if that
makes sense - with bumps up to a hundred, and coming down to about
80. It is so consistent that I am positive my system cannot handle
even normal frame rates for some reason. However, I am running on
XP Pro with a Pentium 4 2.80GHz processor and 2.5 gigs of RAM and I
should not even be having this problem - I can run tons of programs
and not have my cpu usage go above even 50, but a flash video puts
it at 100. It is ridiculous! I don't have a virus or anything, and
I actually take pride in keeping my computer clean and efficient.
It happens to all users on the computer as well.
Again, I am not a programmer. Is there some option somewhere
that I can tell my flash content to reduce its frame rate, or not
go above a certain number? It seems that many people are having
this problem. I think I remember someone somewhere saying that with
the newer versions, they are trying to perform "better" than an
older version you had, and the frames per second increases, but I
have no idea if this is true. Should I roll back to a later
version, like 5? I already tried it back on version 9 but I still
had the problem.
The "ideal" solution is to figure out what is going on with
the frame rate on my computer. Maybe if I could just right click
the flash, and tell it to play a lower fps? Does hardware
acceleration have to do with this? Also, changing the "quality" of
the flash content from low to high or medium doesn't affect the cpu
usage - it stays at 100%.
Please help out an ignorant person if you can. I want to
preserve the life of my computer as long as possible. If someone
could help me - in layman's terms - I would greatly appreciate it,
and so would all the other upset people googling "flash cpu
problem." Thank you!
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