Gray circle with white exclamation mark on white background

[jdw9113]

We have a digital signage app that uses the flash player OCX as a COM component within a .NET application running on XP and Win 7.   Since upgrading some clients to flash version 10.1.53.64 we are experiencing a variety of issues to include:

1) fscommand calls that are being raised from the SWFs being played eventually stop being raised to (or at least received by) the application.  The behavior is not consistant, and it usually takes a while for this to occur.  Only an app restart seems to restore functionality.

2) Also occasionally insted of the SWF that is supposed to be playing, a white screen is displayed in the flash window.   The screen has a small gray circle with a white exclamation mark in the center.  When this occurs it never recovers - even when a new SWF is loaded.  No errors are raised and the app "thinks" that everything is still going smoothly.  Again a app restart is required to fix it.

We can usually recover from missing fscommands because if we expect a command that never comes, we can restart gracefully.  Issue 2 is more problematic in that its only a visual thing - no errors or other bad behavior seem to be occuring.

Any thoughts of fixes or work arounds would be appreciated.

Thanks.

[radioways1]

TO ALL THE DEVELOPPERS AND PERSONS WHO ARE CONCERNED WITH THIS BUG.

This is not the right place to exchange on this bug.

If you want to really follow this bug, and be sure that Adobe development and debug team read your message :
Please go to :

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/FP-7298

Don't hesitat to comment and add you personnel tests to give the maximum information to Adobe developpement and debug team.

PS : thousands thanks to Chris Campbell for this precious information.

Best regards.

Georges Bacha

CEO
Radioways

http://www.radioways.com

[Bonyak]

This Problem has not been solved. I have noticed and got warning from Norton 360 that Firefox 5 is having high memory issues and I am not actively running the Flash it also crashed my 2nd life software during online play. While I do not understand all the technical programming behind direct x and flash player. It crashes on facebook applicatons after long play time. Norton warnings come up of high memory usage for firefox in just simple browsing. My system is Win 7 32 bit with a intel q9400 dual quad cpu and GEforce 9800GT. Norton specificaly warns that an entire cpu is being comsumed by Firefox. This did not happen until the lastest update to Flash Player 10. whatever. The Problem as stated by one person is that the Flashplayer is not deleting the trash and is bleeding out is a very good explination of the Problem. I clean up all files after each use and virus scan after each use of Firefox. Norton has been taking a very long time now in file cleanup and it did not do that before the lastest update. Adobe's employee that responded about the bug has been reported is fine but we need a solution. I agree blaming others for your lack of proper configuration of a product publishing it to the public and not checking with quality assurance proceedures in todays programming is a total lack of responsibility on the part of Adobe. This memory bleed over is a serious matter as it is comsuming resources without preoperly handling the trash. Adobe needs to get on this problem without delay.

with respect

MS Tech since 1984

[furius_1991]

at the moment im experiencing the same problem... youtube loads and ill give it maybe 20 seconds and it blocks, the same goes to anything flash on firefox... at the moment im using chrome and it doesnt seem to affect chrome or safari ive reinstalled firefox installed the update disinstalled flash installed the update and still nothing!! please fix the problem or any suggestion on how to fix the problem would be good.

thanxs!

[Bonyak]

I can comfirm the white flashing screen. Happens just before the Memory overload. Going back to an older version maybe a problem in it's self Java is plalying a role when the cashe is cleared for both it will stop for awhile. And yes it only occurs after long game play. Now you have the two plugins one for IE and other browsers and some games do not recognize the one for other browsers because they are developed on IE. It must be installed on both browser types to function for these games. Just another push it out the door and fix it later routine from today developers.

[Charbs09]

Hello, I am able to reproduce the issue at radioways.com and we will look into this.  Thank you all for your reports.

[Archen1983]

The grey circle of death (GCOD)  means your Flashplayer Runtime is crashed.

All your swfs which were running on your machine will halt and display GCOD.

It is often happen in kiosk because kiosk usually using very large Image and swfs. it is highly correlative with memory using, fix memory leaks can reduce GCOD happen significantly.

[Aubreyff]

I think you can remove the div and then recreate it with javascript.  I just wish flash would fire an event that it is about to crash, that way I could do something about it. Also when I do trace, the cpu memory doesn't indicate a memory leak.  I posted on this blog, probably about a year ago and nobody has really addressed this problem yet. Sad days for adobe flash.

[Archen1983]

well,memory leak is not only happen when memeory is full. I usually find some object instances keep growing in memeory(using profile tools in flash builder) but not used a lot memory, when i fact the GCODs. And when i solve that problem, like releasing the references of instance make it can be gc, the GCOD also solved.

[radioways1]

Sad days for Adobe...

I deeply regret my decision of developping our website 100% with flash technology...

http://www.radioways.com/

It is been a year we are informing Adobe about a huge bug making any flash player crash with exclamation Mark.
The more your application is important, the fastest this bug happens as it is a leak of memory with flash player.

Chris Campbel answered saying they are taking in consideration this important problem.

But nothing has been done SINCE LAST YEAR

Yes Aubreyff, SAD DAYS FOR ADOBE
The solution is to migrate to other langage... What a waste of time and money for us !!!
For any person that is considering using Adobe, please consider this important leak of memory of Flash Player...

There is even a bug report :

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2928203.

But nothing has been done yet !!!!

[radioways1]

Message to Chris Campbel,

Dear Chris,

When Adobe will take seriously in consideration this important bug of Flash Player ??

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2928203

Please help us.... It is not serious and acceptable for Adobe not to fix it.

Thank you.

[chris.campbell]

Radioways and others affected on this thread,

I wanted to let you know that we are taking this bug seriously.  This has the attention of the Flash Player management team and we know that this is a serious issue for you and others running into memory leaks.  While the public bug was marked "Closed/Deferred/Not enough time" for Flash Player 11.1, it is being investigated for 11.2.  Right now the internal status is Open/ToFix, please feel free to ping me in the up coming weeks for an update.  You can reach me on this thread or email me directly at ccampbel@adobe.com

Thanks,

Chris

radioways1 wrote:

Message to Chris Campbel,

Dear Chris,

When Adobe will take seriously in consideration this important bug of Flash Player ??

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2928203

Please help us.... It is not serious and acceptable for Adobe not to fix it.

Thank you.

[Guest]

Dear Chris,

In my opinion this issue is getting rather out of hand.

Since Decamber 7th, many users of various software and sites are experiencing serious problems, effecting the way they use or are no longer able to use the services provided. The problem is being discussed on various forums and boards where I participate.

Examples include: imagevenue, megaupload, rapidshare, basically anything that uses flashplayer to provide a box to enter information. Browsers effected appear to include all older versions of IE, all versions of Mozilla's firefox and all versions of Opera. I do not have information on Google Chrome yet. Operating systems effected appear to be all versions of Windows before and including XP. I do not have information concerning Vista, 7 or other Operating systems yet. One of the problems is that the software developers of the sites and browsers mentioned simply build or update their sites around the latest version of flashplayer without checking if it works on all (or most) systems.

Would you please be kind enough to update your message of November the 18th and give a progress report, or better still a bug-fix?

Thank you in advance!    Mike.

[chris.campbell]

Hi Mike,

The bug against memory leaks for audio streaming is still under investigation (currently marked Open / To Fix in our internal database).  However, it sounds like you're referring to possibly something else.  Can you open a new bug, giving specific steps to reproduce, over at bugbase.adobe.com?  I don't want your issue to be missed and getting a bug in is the best way to make sure we investigate.

Thanks,

Chris

[Guest]

Hi Chris,

Thanks for your reply.

I would answer your question but unfortunately the adobe forum is not

displaying as it should. There is no "reply" option available at all. I

have tried 4 browsers. Please advise.

Edit: I was using google chrome. This seems to partially work now on IE, but I had to re-load and the forum iself is not displaying as it should.

A few updates. As far as I know a version of Flash Player version 11.2 was out and available before you wrote that you were still working on the 11.1 bug fixes. I have been able to download this and a few problems have been corrected, but not all.

The problems I have had using services such as megaupload, imagevenue and now even youtube have been resolved by browsing with Google Chrome.

Michael

[Guest]

Hi Chris.

Will you please update us about this issue?
Is it about to be solved?
How can we follow it's status?

Just to be clear, the grey circle of deatch (GCOD) issue is still occues.
I noticed it only at Youtube.
I'm getting the GCOD randomly, usualy after 3-4 videos of about 3-5 minutes in their best quality (720 or 1080).
Of course I can see the memory leak, and the large amount of page faults (via the task manager).

Thanks.

[chris.campbell]

need4steer,

If you are referring to this bug:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=2928203

It was found that the developer was using the sound object which is not meant for audio streaming.  Instead, they should be using the NetStream API.  For more details, please see this blog post:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/icecast-streams.html

If you're concerned about other out of memory conditions, please see the article that Xircal posted further back in the thread.

Thanks,

Chris

[Guest]

Hi Chris.

Thanks a lot for your quick response.

I am referring to the bug you linked me to (Bug#2928203), though I can't see how the solution is connected to YouTube (this is the only place I noticed the GCOD so far).

Are you saying that they are using the sound object which is not meant for audio streaming too?

Anyway at the bug link you can see that the behavior that jmadle123 described there (at May 4, 2012 at 7:44:12 AM PDT) is exactly my behavior - I'm opening a tab, viewing a video, then closing the tab, and opening a video in a new tab - and so on. After 3-4 times of this at 720p/1080p, or after 7-10 times at 320p/480p, I'm getting the GCOD.

If I'm looking at the Task Manager, I also can clearly see that one of Internet Explorer's processes is taking at least 600 M (the other are 3-4 processess are usually far behind him). I see this in the "Working Set (Memory)" column. I can also see a large amount of page faults (in the "Page Faults" column).

I looked at Xircal posts too.

His link to Deke Smith's article at your blog was helpful to understanding the GCOD issue.

According to this article, the GCOD is a "generic memory error icon was added for version 10.1 and will appear within a browser when the Flash Player has been particularly abused or is running in a very low memory environment." ... "either the browser does not get memory sufficient for its needs from the system and/or objects are being created and not released for garbage collection within Flash."

Sounds like we are familiar well enough with the issue, but how this problem can be addressed?
Why the memory is leaking when I play a few videos at YouTube?
Is there a thing I can do in order to address this issue (besides replacing a browser or opening and closing too many tabs)?

Here is a link to Deke Smith's article, "What is the gray circle with an exclamation mark (or bang)?", at your blog:
http://blogs.adobe.com/dekesmith/2011/11/09/what-is-the-gray-circle-with-an-exclamation-mark-or-bang...

BTW, I'm using Internet Explorer 9 on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit, with the latest Flash Player (11.2.202.235). The same issue occurs at Windows 7 Ultimate 32-bit.

[chris.campbell]

Thanks for the follow up.  I believe we're dealing with a different bug here, though they both have the same end result (out of memory).  Can you open a new bug up on your YouTube / IE example?  Have you given our 11.3 beta 3 release a try to see if it also occurs there?

Thanks,
Chris

[Guest]

Yes, of course.

I'll open a new bug.

I'm guessing you'd like me to try 11.3 beta 3 release, so I'll try it.

After that shall I post the results in a new discussion, or shall we keep this discussion going?

And as for the bug, I ran into "Adobe Bug and Issue Management System" at: http://bugs.adobe.com/flashplayer/

Shall I register there also, or is it just like if I'll add a bug via "Add Bug" at: https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=newBug?

[chris.campbell]

Thank you for adding the bug, bugbase.adobe.com is sufficient.  We just released 11.3 officially, so I'd definitely recommend giving that a try.  I think opening a new thread would probably be better than tacking to this one, you can always reference this thread in your initial post if you feel like there's relevant info here.

Chris

[Guest]

Thanks a lot for keeping us updated.

I just downloaded the latest version (11.3.300.257).

BTW, it's nice to have the 32-bit and the 64-bit versions into one installer, and to have one uninstaller both active-x and the plugin version.

I'll check the new version, and I'll update.

I'll sure open a new bug and a new thread if the problem will persist.

[Guest]

Unfortunately the problem is persisting in the latest version also.

I sure will open a new discussion and a new bug.

I'll collect as much information as I can.

BTW, I think the workaround for now is just to locate the leaking iexplore.exe process and ending it using the Task Manager, and then everything is back to "normal", untill some other iexplore.exe process will leak, and then end, and so on.

Pretty annoying, but working.

I must admit it's a bit hectic right now becuase of the upcoming tests, so it might take me a while, maximum 4 weeks from now.

I'll be back...

[chris.campbell]

Thanks!

[drazreckned]

Hi Chris, I just wanted to throw my hand in the air and say that I too am a victim to the GCOD (Grey Circle of Death). I have noticed that this has been prevalent for me for almost a year now. I know you are working hard to fix this and for that, you have my gratitude. Here is what I see when I encounter the GCOD:

Memory rises, once it hits its limit it "shields" itself thus leaving me with the GCOD. I have also tried Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9. It seems to occur when running audio/video streaming for too long. If this helps, great, if not, I wanted to voice my thoughts and situation.

Now I have something else I would like to ask you Chris. Since restarting is a pain for me, is there some way I can manually restart flash so that I can continue with whatever it was that I was doing before the GCOD? If there were a way, would you please inform me/others of how to do it?

Thanks in advance, Ben

Edit: I could not wait so I researched it for a bit. This is a fix for me for now, but it might be of some use or help to others.

What I did when I got the GCOD: For Chrome- I pressed Shift+Escape and ended the flash process (it was at the end of the list.). For Internet Explorer- I ended all iexplore.exe processes and restarted IE. For Firefox and Opera, I did the same but the .exe's for them were Opera.exe (Opera) and plugin-container.exe (FF)

Here is the link for the information of which I learned this temporary Band-Aid fix: http://forum.playdom.com/showthread.php?39805-How-to-Force-Exit-Flash-Player-without-Restarting-your...

Message was edited by: Dr4zr3ckn3d

[Guest]

Thanks a lot for your confirmation.

I saw it only in Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit, in Internet Explorer 9 32-bit.

As I wrote in my previous post, I'll open a new discussion in which I'll describe in detail how to restore the GCOD.

I'll also post a new bug.

BTW thanks a lot for the link with the explanatios about how to stop Flash Player.

I'll just clarify that the method that is mentioned for Internet Explorer is not great, becuase just ending all of the iexplore.exe precesses will indeed close Internet Explorer, but ending just the "leaking" one, as I described in my previous post, will solve the problem by restarting the Flash Player, and in the worst case it'll reopen the tabs, or some of them, that was (were) open.