Adobe flash player either hangs or crashes in Firefox

Report · Aug 27, 2013

Adobe flash player either hangs up the web browser Firefox or crashes within Firefox. This has been occurring for about a year even though Firefox and the adobe flash player have been updated and upgraded many times over the last year. Multiple crash reports have been sent to either Adobe or Firefox (I am not sure which one actually gets the crash report) but it appears someone knows about this issue since I seem to be getting more pop up boxes from Firefox now when the Windows 7 system seems to hang (no response from mouse when I try to close the Firefox browser window). The pop up box states that Adobe flash player is not responding or in a loop so when I respond to the pop up window to cancel the task all the flash player displays in all of the open Firefox browser sessions crash. However, if I use google chrome and the same ESPN videos that use Adobe flash player so far I have not seen the same issue of hangs or crashes. So, is this a known issue with Adobe flash player and/or Firefox or has it just never been fixed correctly?

Configuration:

Sony VPCF2390X - I7-2760QM - 8 GB - GEForce GT 540M - 1920 X 1200 Resolution

Windows 7 Home Premium Service Pack 1 - 7.1.13.1088 64-bit

Firefox 23.0.1

Adobe Flash Player 11,8,800,115

Message was edited by: Stingray99

Report · Oct 10, 2013

I've been having this problem for months. IMO, haqving been involved with computer software since 1959 [get it? 1959] and having worked on security issues with M'soft years ago, this is shameful. This issue should have been elevated a long time ago. My way around it has been to reboot and wait for it to happen again. If I had my way, I'd substitute some other plugin to pass over Adobe. They are asleep at the switch. I'm bumping it up to Computer World and other important publications. Maybe SOMEONE responsible will do something besides 'try this and try that.'

Report · Oct 10, 2013

Revmrf, the constant theme is: it's your computer that's the problem, not our program. Everything points to the fact that it's their program and their company that's a total goddamned mess -- years and years of highly detailed user posts all over the internet that are never adequately dealt with, a virtual absence of company technicians (Chris is the first who has reponded to me over the six months my computing life has been wrecked by their product), and, in my own specific case, yesterday's safe mode troubleshooting and today's dxdiag report. If you need a reader/editor before you send anything off to any publications, let me know. info at jetwriting dot com.

Report · Oct 10, 2013

Suggestion: Go to your add-ons and download 'Video WithOut Flash.'

Report · Oct 09, 2013

I have been having the same problems for some time, and still today after installing the latest version of Shockwave Flash. Flash stops responding and when I click on either "end process" or "cancel" in the message window, nothing happens. If I open Task Manager to end the process (usually only Firefox is shown, either as running or not responding, and not the Flash Plug-in) rarely Firefox will close but usually the whole system freezes and I cannot even use Task Manager to shut down the computer. Then I have to press the re-set button. Needless to say, this is very annoying and the sundry solutions offered in this and othe forums never seem to help or appear to complicated for a casual user such as me. It also seemed to be common behavior, to both this desktiop machine and to my laptop, and to quite a few other posters on other sites.

However, in checking the plug-ins I noticed that I had one for Adobe Shockwave Director. Disabling that made no difference, but led me to check my installed hardware. There I found I had Adobe Air, Adobe Flash Player 11 Active-X, Adobe Flash Player Plug-in, Adobe Shockwave Player 12.0 and the Shockwave Director Plug-in. I assume that some site required me to have some of these applications in order to run their animations or videos, but since I do not use all of them myself, I uninstalled Adobe Air, Shockwave Player 12.0 and the Shockwave Director Plug-in. At the moment dleleting these seems to have resolved the problem of playing Flash videos.

This may not be the ultimate solution, but it should carry little risk since the two applications and the plug-in can readily be downloaded for free if some site indicates they are necessary to view their material. I do not know if the problem was conflicts among the Adobe applications or in the way Firefox tried to handle them.

Report · Oct 29, 2013

It seems to be the same problem for me.

My new computer since last summer: Windows 8 x64, 4770K, HD6950, Firefox last version, Flash last version...

And, at almost every Firefox launch (and always after reboot), while Firefox begins to load all my open tabs (~150), Flash container is loop-crashing. So I close Firefox, I launch Flash installer and reinstall it, and relaunch Firefox. Every day. I even put a shortcut to the Flash installer in my desktop because it is a routine now...

If after a reboot, I try to be smart and reinstall Flash before launching Firefox... it won't work. I need to launch Firefox, let Flash crash one time, then close it and reinstall. It is not firefox-linked, because I tried with an other browser (not sure of that but I can retry).

So quickfix : reinstall Flash each time. Hope for a real fix.

Report · Oct 29, 2013

Do you have any "add-ons" in your FF installation? You might try dissabling them one by one.

Report · Oct 30, 2013

I pointed out it is on a new computer because I never had this problem before (I thought it was a Windows 8 one, or maybe a SSD one).

@Fcrash: Ok, back to test. I'm very surprised because it is not what I remembered and expected...

- it's only with Firefox (I launch some Flash things in Opera and Chromium, no crash this morning, only in Firefox)

- reboot of Firefox in safe mode, no Flash crash anymore

- reboot of Firefox in normal mode, no Flash crash anymore (wtf!!)

Yes I have a lot of addons, it's too long to try one by one. The successful boot in safe mode fix the problem, it surprised me because I wanted to find what the guilty addon is. I'm pretty sure to have already tried this and conclude it was not an addon problem because I didn't find it... Maybe the previous versions of Firefox or Flash was worst that the current one. I will retry the next crash time by disabling my addons (no safe mode), etc.

Report · Oct 29, 2013

There are days when I want to throw my computer into a brick wall or smash it up with a hammer and start over with a new computer. And then I think of people like you.

Report · Sep 17, 2014

Don't even dare to reset firefox, this is google and youtube play evil, and with some adobe incompetency.

Report · Sep 21, 2014

I have the problem the original poster and many others have.

FACT: Pages using many flash applets and videos on the same page will hang in any browser we have on any machine. For example try any big newspaper (Chicago Sun Time, Miami Herald, etc.) or similar ad-infested site. I do not know if this is a RAM or processor related issue, could be, but sometimes too much is just too much for any processor. One of those papers is running two videos, four ads, and attempting to render a pop-up all at the same time. 8 GB and it doesn't seem enough.

THEORY: There is no problem with either the browsers or Flash. The problem is with the IMPLEMENTATION of flash (and java, for that matter) on web pages.

Now when I get to pages like these, I simply close my browser tab and make a mental note not to ever visit them again. It's a shame because some of them are pretty good. But 3 videos 4 flash ads and a couple of pop-ups (along with tracking cookie) at the same time will slow down any system. It's like trying to turn your monitor into a 12 compartment PIP screen as well. Graphics use up all this mega power we have.

I signed up for this forum just to give my 2 cents on this question, we have been searching a better solution but see none exist.

Report · Oct 15, 2014

I have been suffering from ridiculously frequent Flash crashes (absolutely MADDENING) in Firefox every since I updated to Windows 8.1 (within the last month). I tried every solution posted on the net I could find (updated Flash, reset Firefox, disable protected mode, etc). Absolutely nothing worked.

FINALLY, the solution for me was to disable Firefox plug-in container. Instructions can be found here: How to disable plugin-container | Fluxbytes

(I am running Windows 8.1, Firefox 33 ,and Flash 15 plugin).

Hope this solution works for some of the rest of you!

Report · Oct 16, 2014

Appears to work for Windows XP and rel 15.0 of Flash Player, also

Report · Oct 16, 2014

Sounds dangerous to me. Doesn't that mean that if the flash plugin hangs up the entire Firefox application will freeze up?

Report · Oct 16, 2014

No, and it is not dangerous. I applied the fix, and have been running smoothly ever since. Normally without the fix, Shockwave Flash would hang repeatedly for every site I went to that used it.

Report · Oct 16, 2014

Thanks for the reassurance. I'll go and do that now.

Report · Oct 17, 2014

Well, as I mentioned in one of my threads, I applied the memory variable fix, and the problem went away. And I would add, that I have seen issues in different forums whereby this issue goes back to previous releases, but has really become apparent recently. And as far as waiting for a fix, I understand that there is a deadlock between Adobe and Mozilla as to who is to blame and who is to fix, so you may be waiting for awhile ! Don't know how true this is, though !

Report · Oct 16, 2014

I just wanted to add that we recently started getting this issue, too. It has happened for a few months, but in the past month or so, it has gotten steadily worse. Today, I finally got fed up and decided to seek some help with it.

I administer about 1900 computers at a community college, and I would say that most of them that have recently been updated have the issue. It happens in all the browsers, but it seems especially pronounced in Firefox.

The computers mostly have DeepFreeze (by Faronics) installed, so these machines are squeaky clean; any changes get wiped out after reboot. We do not allow permanent changes to be made by students or staff.

Unfortunately, that cleanliness comes at a price; it doesn't allow me to view crash logs because they get erased after the computer has been rebooted.

Even though I probably can't be much help in diagnosing the issue, I wanted to be sure that Adobe knows that this is -- without a doubt -- an issue now. I'm just getting around to saying something now because it has simply become unbearable. I will consciously avoid Web sites (like Facebook, in particular) that have Flash content simply because it causes some many issues now. I really hope Adobe is taking this seriously and trying to find the issue. In the 8 years that I've been in IT, I don't think I've seen Flash player ever crash this frequently, especially in otherwise stable browsers like Firefox. I suppose it could be an issue with Firefox or even an issue affecting both Firefox and Flash player.

In any case, I hope it gets fixed.

Report · Oct 20, 2014

>73K views on the original post, and counting. Is Adobe talking to Mozilla and vice versa?

After realizing this particular issue was taking hours off my life (ie. being, like everyone on this thread, an unpaid beta-tester for this Adobe/Mozilla SNAFU), I swallowed my pride and after more than a decade using Firefox started using IE. No more crashes.

Just because twitchy update-culture has made downloading glitchy beta-ware the norm doesn't make it acceptable.

Report · Oct 20, 2014

Yeah, we are trying to decide which direction we are going to go.

We support too many computers for this to continue being an issue, and we are most certainly not going to use older, less-secure versions of either Flash player or Firefox.

At this point, we are trying to figure out whether we need to ditch Flash player or Firefox across campus. Right now, I think we are leaning more towards Flash player just because it adds another resource hog that we don't like having to deal with, anyway.

We started these discussions today, so hopefully by the end of the week, we'll have a better idea if we can just stop letting users have Flash player.

Report · Dec 01, 2014

I know I'm kind of late and not sure if we have the same problem. But what seems to have worked for me was disabling my Hardware Acceleration and Smooth Scrolling.

And Just to make sure that those annoying Flash Ads didn't keep freezing my Browser, I installed Adblock Plus - Surf the web without annoying ads! And also https://noscript.net/. Those two things have significantly improved my browsing experience.

Report · Dec 02, 2014

Yer right - yer kinda late ! Problem solved long time ago

Report · Dec 02, 2014

Doesn't matter if I'm late cause obviously other people STILL have problems so its not just for him. And if it was already solved maybe they should have marked it as assumed answered. All is irrelevant. This trick worked for me. It's been two days for me without the constant crashing (usually 20 times a day). The weird thing is, I would have expected Hardware acceleration to be the culprit but I still kept crashing. It wasn't till I disabled the auto and smooth scrolling that worked for me and I have no Idea why. I'm sure that I'm not that unique with my problem...so if it helps someone else...let it do so. Your comment however was pointless and unproductive. This forum is about helping people so you pointing out how late I am did nothing to educate me or other readers. You could have at least taken the time out to show me how the "Problem solved long time ago" so I know for future references. This was I can offer that solution to others in case they ever need help with a similar problem.

Report · Dec 02, 2014

That did not fix the crash each time I open a page with a flash player clip

Report · Dec 02, 2014

Sorry. Good luck to you though. I know how annoying it can be.

Report · Dec 02, 2014

Yeah LMAO. Like I'm gonna waste my time going back and forth with you like a fake ass, online thug. I'll let this be the last time I respond to anything you say. Go find someone else to troll.