Flash Player Causes Overheating?

Report · Sep 04, 2009

Until relatively recently (a month or so ago?) I had absolutely no problem watching embedded videos. Then, out of nowhere, my laptop started shutting down every time I tried to watch a Flash video online. I eventually realized the problem was auto-shutdown due to massive overheating - my laptop's normal temperature while browsing is around 60-70 C, and any time I watch a Flash video (especially any sort of high-quality Flash video) this jumps up to about 95 C for a few minutes before auto-shutdown. If I leave the Flash video running in a minimized window or an un-focused tab (anywhere where it isn't rendering to the screen), the temperature returns to more reasonable but still seemingly high levels (about 85 C).

This seems crazy to me, considering I can run several hi-def videos simultaneously offline (using Windows Media Player Classic) without my laptop breaking a sweat. I've made sure I have the latest Flash Player updates, and I've tried a number of browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari), with nearly identical results in every one. I can't watch most videos online anymore, and nothing besides Flash Player causes my laptop to overheat like this, including 3D modeling/animation software and video processing/editing software. Can somebody help me out here? Does anybody know what's going on with this?

Thanks in advance for any help -

Report · Sep 04, 2009

I've heard of this, but we've never been able to make it happen in house. And we test many thousands of pages of SWF content daily.

So I'm not sure what to advise. If you were in San Francisco we might be able to arrange to take a look..

One thing you could do is uninstall (using the uninstall app), then get Flash Player 9 from the archived players technote and see if it stops happening...

If you're interested in going to that level of troubleshooting, please open a web support case (http://www.adobe.com/support/contact) and post back the case #.

Report · Sep 12, 2009

Ok, I tried Flash Player 9, with almost no change in temperature - so I finally bought some compressed air, opened up my laptop, and cleaned out the air intake, fan, & heat sink. This cleaning reduced my average laptop temperature by about 10-15 C down to a much more comfortable level (~50-55 C).

The dramatic increase in temperature still happens when running Flash Player (it jumps up from 50-55 C to about 80 C), but this temperature is now within my laptop's operational limits, and shutdown no longer occurs.

So yeah, thanks for the response, I hope my experience might help anybody else with this issue - though I do have to admit that I still find it kind of puzzling that Flash Player is the only piece of software on my computer that causes this kind of temperature increase.

Report · Sep 14, 2009

Flash is definitely causing my MBP a meltdown!!! For a flash site like youtube or hulu or espn.com or any site similar, my CPU usage goes +100% and it's all the webkit flash plugin in Safari.

I've updated to 10.6.1 with the latest flash plugin and still the same results. The only thing I can do is avoid flash sites all together until you guys at Adobe recognize the problem and put out a fix.. which I suppose will be never so thanks a lot for overheating my hardware.

Report · Sep 24, 2009

same thing happens to me, I can watch youtube but if i watch my space viedo my computer will overheat and shut down in 20 minutes, i freeze a bottle of water and put it inside my computer that extended the limit to 30+ mins....

boot up the computer again, cool down for 5 mins with my cpu fan on, then watch again.

Something is not right here

Report · Sep 25, 2009

We get this as well on a P4 playing flash based games. Is it bad programming on the developers side?

It's funny as it doesn't happen on our work PC's.

Report · Sep 29, 2009

The same thing happens to me. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/494975?tstart=90

Your work PCs might be more powerful and/or have dual cores that don't cause the CPU to spike to 100%, or perhaps they just have better cooling. I find it VERY hard to believe Adobe can't reproduce this problem in-house - it happens to me on 2 different vintage machines that are configured completely differently, and it can be observed using Firefox, Chrome or IE. I suggest the Adobe engineers try going to facebook and playing some Fishworld!

Report · Oct 01, 2009

In some other threads, it is said that Adobe lets flash animations always run in maximum quality by default; this can be a problem.

Web pages that use intensive Flash Player use make older pc's suffer because of this decision about always-in-high-quality graphics.

Why doesn't Adobe implement a global configuration override so that the user can choose the default quality of Flash Player videos? Or perhaps let us customize a global fps setting? Too hard to develop? This can reduce the 100% cpu saturation to something a bit lower.

Report · Oct 05, 2009

Although marked as answered, I think this question is not answered yet because Flash Player causes overheating even after cleaning fan and heat sink.

@dtforhan: >> "I still find it kind of puzzling that Flash Player is the only piece of software on my computer that causes this kind of temperature increase"

All the people with and older cpu and knowledge enough to open Task Manager while playing flash movies will agree.

Why doesn't Adobe implement a global configuration override so that the user can choose the default quality for Flash Player videos? Or perhaps let us customize a global fps setting? Too hard to develop? This can reduce the 100% cpu saturation to something a bit lower.

Report · Oct 11, 2009

For anyone interested on solving this issue or a similar one, please login to https://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/ then search and VOTE for all opened questions that match as exactly as possible to yours in order to increase their importance. Adobe asks not to mix OS's in questions; for example, if your Flash Player plays slowly in Windows, don't vote for a question about slow playing in Linux.

This seems to be the right way to make flash developers pay attention to this kind of problems.

Report · Nov 16, 2009

This may be related to a well-known issue with the Flash/Shockwave browser plugins that cause CPU spikes, and occurs on both Windows and OSX. It may cause problems even when there is no Flash on the page. It's most likely an implementation problem with Adobe. Uninstalling Flash+Shockwave player fixes the issue. 😐

Firefox thread documenting behavior:
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/415618?forumId=1&comments_threshold=0&comments_parentId=415...

Report · Nov 12, 2010

well I don't have CPU problem. yes, it is jumpint to 100% and load is high but the problem that I have is more scarier. my GPU is going wild if I run any flash video or go to any flash site. I have MBP 3.1 SantaRosa 2.2GHz 128GB SSD Muskin Calisto, 4GB RAM GSkill and Nvidia 8600GT (which have know issue with overheating and GPU meltdown), so the flash plugin is the mayor problem for me (and probably for everyone that has 8600GT chip on MBP). when I say GPU is going wild I ment literally wild, it jumps from 45ºC to 95 -105ºC just in about 10 seconds. Adobe programmers have major problems with security issues and I can understand that, but developing something that can harm your device is just wrong. MBP is very expensive machine and I can't just buy another one....

please do something to improve flash on OS X

Report · Nov 12, 2010

Try disabling Hardware Acceleration.

dovla091 wrote:
please do something to improve flash on OS X

You have to take this up with Adobe; this is just a user forum.

Report · Jul 09, 2011

Believe me

I don't need to be here at all

its just that adobe has done such a stupid thing and employed hardware aceleration without every possible pc setup at their disposal, am I even here.

my pc is shutting down from overheating, and I play the latest gpu intensive games without any problems. If all of my data came from the hard drive there would be absolutely no need for hardware acceleration, and internet data is not ready to take on hard drive data. Get off the hardware acceleration gig, you or the internet is ready for hardware acceleration. I m gonna make sure that microsoft is not so anal as to just let other companies take the rein like apple.

In short the solution is for adobe to release flash player without hardware acceleration

Report · Sep 12, 2011

I have two Dell Latitide E6400 series laptops and flash causes the CPU to overheat on both (one has a dual core CPU and the other has a quad core processor). Glad to see I am not the only one who does not have this problem. I will be moving to an Ipad which supports HTML5 and does not have this problem.

Report · Dec 04, 2012

For 3 days now I have the same problem. My MSI m662 is shutting down from overheating due to CPU overload.

I know its an older laptop but why in the world is Flash player so processor intensive?

Report · Nov 10, 2014

Hello!

I just want to say that we are now late 2014 (5 year this bug have been reported)

and this bug have not been repaired...

i have a lenovo thinkpad x201 with i5 vpro with Ubuntu 14.04 for the job, and facebook flashplayer cause overheat on my laptop.

my normal core temp is around 50 degree, and when i start any game, it jump to 90 degree in 15 seconds...

i really hope dev put an eyes on this!

Report · Jan 06, 2015

Right. I'm actually surprised this already ocurred 2009 and it still hasn't been fixed.

I'm having had this problem on my old Core Duo 2 Windows machine since 2 months or so, never a problem before.

Report · Jun 15, 2015

I experienced this problem once I installed additional RAM module. After I removed the dust from the fan it started working normally.

Report · Jun 16, 2015

Well, there's no bug, which is why this thread persists. Flash Player doesn't have magic properties that allow it to add additional dust to the inside of your computer, nor does it have the ability to choose a poor thermal management design. Some Flash content uses a lot of CPU, but the reality is that your machine should be able to run at 100% CPU without overheating. If the machine is overheating, it has a cooling problem. We can't fix your cooling problem from software.

GIven that this thread is super old, I'm going to lock it. In general, if you have a decent GPU with current drivers, Flash Player will offload as much video and graphics processing as possible to the purpose-built, energy-efficient GPU on your system, as long as you have hardware acceleration enabled (it's on by default).

If your machine is constantly overheating, go buy one of those cans of compressed air from your local office supply store, take the machine outside, and give it a really thorough dusting. Check to make sure all the fans are spinning as expected, and that you're resting the machine on a surface where air can actually enter and leave all the appropriate vents. There's no magic here. If a good cleaning doesn't solve the heat problem, it's time to consult your manufacturer about an in-warranty repair, or your local technician for an evaluation. They might be able to examine the machine and improve the cooling situation with better fans, etc.