Web browsers become unresponsive due to Flash plugin (Problem has re-emerged after a prior fix)

[vanchico]

Jeromie Clark‌

I was part of a discussion group in which many Lenovo users were experiencing problems with the Flash plugin on their web browsers (Re: A plugin (Shockwave Flash) isn't responding. forums.adobe.com/message/7992871#7992871). The problems largely consisted of unresponsive messages on Chrome, Edge, and IEon websites such as Facebook, Youtube, Gmail, and others that use chat or play html5 videos. In Chrome, the message says that a plugin (Flash) has become unresponsive and then the page can no longer be interacted with. In Edge, it just ceases to respond. These issues were fixed for a few days now, but after my Windows updated itself again last night, the problems came back.

Has anyone else seen these issue make a comeback? I'm using a Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 with Windows 10 x64.

[jeromiec83223024]

Have you rebooted the machine since the symptoms started?  If not, do the symptoms go away after reboot?

What step did you take as part of the previous thread that resolved the issues for you originally?

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie,

Thanks for the reply! Thanks for the reply. The issue was resolved (apparently) after Windows issued a flash security update and Chrome update their newest 45 version browser to from 45.0.2454.99 from 2454.93. I also took the steps of uninstalling and reinstalling my graphics and audio drivers. However, having done the latter two steps and also rebooting the computer and resetting IE and other browsers using internet options and clearing the cache (as well as all data using the Flash Control Panel), the issues persist in Edge, Chrome, and IE. So far, as before, Firefox is not affected, and this could be due to the fact that I don't have Flash installed on my laptop.

Both Microsoft and Chrome and have been pretty bad at troubleshooting his with me, and you guys at Adobe seem to be the only ones who pay attention, so I appreciate your attention to this.

[jeromiec83223024]

This week was Patch Tuesday, so Windows update would have included the regularly scheduled monthly Flash release.  Most of our releases have proactive security fixes (we work closely with researchers and the industry to try and stay a head of the latest security research), so nothing really out of the ordinary there.

You said "resolved (apparently)", which makes me think that the symptoms maybe just disappeared mysteriously for a few days without any action on your part.  I'm not sure why they would go away after an upgrade and then come back.

Have you tried disabling hardware acceleration in Chrome?  After all the changes that you made, is it still disabled? 

If it's hardware related and affecting IE/Edge, I can't do much about that at the moment.  At some point the switch in IE that disables hardware stopped disabling it for Flash, but it works fine in Chrome.

Here's the guide on turning off hardware:

How do I disable or enable hardware acceleration?

[vanchico · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeromie,

Yes, hardware acceleration has been off in both the Chrome settings and via the global settings for a while (before the unresponsive error came back again). Will let you know if this problem persists. Hopefully, it was a one-off thing. I"ll try to use Chrome right to see if the error pops up again.

Thanks again!

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie,
the problem is persisting. You mentioned in a previous post that you had ask someone to troubleshoot the problem on a lenovo as well and am wondering what the results of that were?

[jeromiec83223024]

I had a guy spend the majority of a day last week trying to reproduce this with on a Lenovo Yoga 2 with Win10 x64, and we don't see the problem at all.  I sent an email to one of the big mailing lists for our site, but wasn't able to track down a Yoga 3 in the building.  We're also not seeing it on the newer ThinkPads, which are super common around work.

I'll probably end up buying one of these to see if we can reproduce it there.  In the meantime, any tips on things that might be unique about your config --- things like third-party virus scanners, software firewalls, ad-blockers, anti-tracking tools, anti-malware, etc, would be helpful. 

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie,

thanks again for the quick replay.Here is some information about my system:

Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13
Windows 10 x64
Ram: 4GB
SSD: 101 GB, with 73 GB free space

Malwarebytes, Hitman Pro, and Windows defender: Malwarebytes was not activated when I first had this problem (late August), error continued when I activated it, and then persisted even after I reset Windows 10.

Driver: Intel HD Graphics 4000 and Conexant SmartAudio HD. I've rolled back and updated these drivers, and both times I get the error.

I've disabled hardware acceleration in Chrome, IE, and on the Adobe website (as per your instructions), and the error will still pop up. I've gone 3 days and as little as instantly after startup without having the error pop up.

I used AdBlock Plus on Chrome, and the error, of course, appears with it enabled or disabled.

Anything else you can think of that might be an issue?

[jeromiec83223024]

Not really.  The Intel HD 4000 does come up in bugs a lot on both Mac and Windows, and there's an open performance issue in Chrome on Mac that I'm aware of on that card specifically.  I don't see anything that calls out Win10 or Win8 that looks like this at the moment.

I'm curious about what the contents of Chrome's GPU information is on your machine.  If you type chrome://gpu/ into the address bar and just paste the contents of the page, that might be enlightening.

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie Clark,

here's the GPU report. (Flash still says hardware-accelerated under Graphics Feature Status, but it's been turned off). Is there anything else that I can look up that might be of interest?

Graphics Feature Status

• Canvas: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable
• Flash: Hardware accelerated
• Flash Stage3D: Hardware accelerated
• Flash Stage3D Baseline profile: Hardware accelerated
• Compositing: Hardware accelerated
• Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled
• Rasterization: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled
• Video Decode: Hardware accelerated
• Video Encode: Hardware accelerated
• WebGL: Hardware accelerated

Driver Bug Workarounds

• clear_uniforms_before_first_program_use
• exit_on_context_lost
• scalarize_vec_and_mat_constructor_args
• texsubimage_faster_than_teximage

Problems Detected

• Some drivers are unable to reset the D3D device in the GPU process sandbox
  Applied Workarounds: exit_on_context_lost
• TexSubImage is faster for full uploads on ANGLE
  Applied Workarounds: texsubimage_faster_than_teximage
• Clear uniforms before first program use on all platforms: 124764, 349137
  Applied Workarounds: clear_uniforms_before_first_program_use
• Always rewrite vec/mat constructors to be consistent: 398694
  Applied Workarounds: scalarize_vec_and_mat_constructor_args
• Accelerated rasterization has been disabled, either via about:flags or command line.
  Disabled Features: rasterization

Version Information

Data exported	9/29/2015, 9:05:58 AM
Chrome version	Chrome/45.0.2454.101
Operating system	Windows NT 10.0
Software rendering list version	10.9
Driver bug list version	8.19
ANGLE commit id	6f0fd8c5457f
2D graphics backend	Skia
Command Line Args	Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe" --flag-switches-begin --flag-switches-end

Driver Information

Initialization time	117
Sandboxed	true
GPU0	VENDOR = 0x8086, DEVICE= 0x0166
Optimus	false
AMD switchable	false
Desktop compositing	Aero Glass
Driver vendor	Intel Corporation
Driver version	10.18.10.4252
Driver date	7-10-2015
Pixel shader version	5.0
Vertex shader version	5.0
Max. MSAA samples	8
Machine model name
Machine model version
GL_VENDOR	Google Inc.
GL_RENDERER	ANGLE (Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000 Direct3D11 vs_5_0 ps_5_0)
GL_VERSION	OpenGL ES 2.0 (ANGLE 2.1.0.6f0fd8c5457f)
GL_EXTENSIONS	GL_OES_element_index_uint GL_OES_packed_depth_stencil GL_OES_get_program_binary GL_OES_rgb8_rgba8 GL_EXT_texture_format_BGRA8888 GL_EXT_read_format_bgra GL_NV_pixel_buffer_object GL_OES_mapbuffer GL_EXT_map_buffer_range GL_OES_texture_half_float GL_OES_texture_half_float_linear GL_OES_texture_float GL_OES_texture_float_linear GL_EXT_texture_rg GL_EXT_texture_compression_dxt1 GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt3 GL_ANGLE_texture_compression_dxt5 GL_EXT_sRGB GL_ANGLE_depth_texture GL_EXT_texture_storage GL_OES_texture_npot GL_EXT_draw_buffers GL_EXT_texture_filter_anisotropic GL_EXT_occlusion_query_boolean GL_NV_fence GL_EXT_robustness GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_ANGLE_framebuffer_blit GL_ANGLE_framebuffer_multisample GL_ANGLE_instanced_arrays GL_ANGLE_pack_reverse_row_order GL_OES_standard_derivatives GL_EXT_shader_texture_lod GL_EXT_frag_depth GL_ANGLE_texture_usage GL_ANGLE_translated_shader_source GL_EXT_debug_marker
Disabled Extensions
Window system binding vendor	Google Inc. (adapter LUID: 000000000000e12c)
Window system binding version	1.4 (ANGLE 2.1.0.6f0fd8c5457f)
Window system binding extensions	EGL_EXT_create_context_robustness EGL_ANGLE_d3d_share_handle_client_buffer EGL_ANGLE_surface_d3d_texture_2d_share_handle EGL_ANGLE_query_surface_pointer EGL_ANGLE_window_fixed_size EGL_NV_post_sub_buffer EGL_KHR_create_context EGL_EXT_device_query
Direct rendering	Yes
Reset notification strategy	0x8252
GPU process crash count	0

Diagnostics

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Log Messages

• WARNING: Hardware acceleration is unavailable.
• GpuProcessHostUIShim: The GPU process exited normally. Everything is okay.
• [8864:5480:0929/082614:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/082620:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083117:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 3
• [8864:5480:0929/083504:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083509:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083649:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083949:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084000:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084019:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084022:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090247:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090333:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090454:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• GpuProcessHostUIShim: The GPU process exited normally. Everything is okay

[jeromiec83223024]

No, this is a tough situation.  We added hardware acceleration to enable Flash Player to run effectively on the sub-laptop class of portable machines (netbooks, ultrabooks, etc), where it's really important to offload processing to the GPU for decent performance and power consumption.  My guess is that this is also driving the trend towards hardware in modern browsers as well.

It's telling that Google has also disabled the HD 4000 for HTML Canvas (the closest Flash analog in HTML), and although they haven't explicitly disabled Hardware Video Decoding, calls to video decode are failing, which means everything is falling back to software and are getting processed on the general-purpose CPU.

WARNING: Hardware acceleration is unavailable.

• GpuProcessHostUIShim: The GPU process exited normally. Everything is okay.
• [8864:5480:0929/082614:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/082620:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083117:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 3
• [8864:5480:0929/083504:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083509:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083649:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/083949:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084000:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084019:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/084022:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090247:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090333:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1
• [8864:5480:0929/090454:ERROR:gpu_video_decode_accelerator.cc(280)] : HW video decode not available for profile 1

I don't see these log messages in Chrome when I disable hardware acceleration in Flash, so I don't believe that this is a result of disabling HW Acceleration.  My guess is that HW Acceleration wasn't working regardless of the flag's state (you should probably re-enable it), and that this is failing at the driver level.  Everything else in turn is falling back to software, which causes the high CPU usage that triggers the slow script dialog in Flash.

There appear to be drivers available from a week or two ago.  I'd give those a shot and see if that fixes things.  Make sure to enable hardware acceleration in Flash and the Browser again, or you're definitely not going to see any improvement. 

Downloads for Intel® HD Graphics 4000 for 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ Processors‌

On a positive note, Intel is definitely working on these drivers.  They're averaging a new version once a month lately.

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie Clark‌,

No luck unfortunately. My graphics driver was already up-to-date, so I'm at a loos as to what is causing this issue. I don't have Flash installed on my laptop, so Firefox works just fine (except that I can't play Netflix videos because it wants me to install Silverlight, but I don't want to jinx the system).

I thought that maybe I could send you my crash reports (the latest coming within the last hour), to see if you knew anything about them or could pass them on to people at Chrome.

Crashes

Crashes (17)

Crash ID 1b881ea55cd4a9b6 (Chrome)

Occurred Friday, October 2, 2015 at 9:07:35 AM

File bug

Crash ID 3e05cc46d2f6067f (Chrome)

Occurred Friday, October 2, 2015 at 8:29:45 AM

File bug

Crash ID acd0397b4249e339 (Chrome)

Occurred Friday, October 2, 2015 at 8:27:39 AM

File bug

Crash ID 3c2b1793d18ff52c (Chrome)

Occurred Friday, October 2, 2015 at 8:26:45 AM

File bug

Crash ID a3500aae523749dc (Chrome)

Occurred Thursday, October 1, 2015 at 7:07:51 PM

File bug

Crash ID 0be3008ad43248b8 (Chrome)

Occurred Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 11:26:49 PM

File bug

Crash ID abba2215cadfae21 (Chrome)

Occurred Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 10:53:50 PM

File bug

Crash ID 171e919bfe42869a (Chrome)

Occurred Sunday, September 27, 2015 at 10:52:53 PM

File bug

Crash ID e2935b018d3f9420 (Chrome)

Occurred Sunday, September 20, 2015 at 11:01:54 AM

File bug

Crash ID ee0b28036e82c0b2 (Chrome)

Occurred Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 3:58:26 PM

File bug

Crash ID 24db9b109574f68a (Chrome)

Occurred Saturday, September 19, 2015 at 10:18:36 AM

File bug

Crash ID 58e5abc3dfaf78d8 (Chrome)

Occurred Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 10:59:33 PM

File bug

Crash ID 0bcd63982260d939 (Chrome)

Occurred Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 5:15:45 PM

File bug

Crash ID d3e9c0c345eb6487 (Chrome)

Occurred Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 5:00:36 PM

File bug

Crash ID 0afc888f8b5e9326 (Chrome)

Occurred Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 4:59:46 PM

File bug

Crash ID 821f7fe579072332 (Chrome)

Occurred Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 1:36:48 PM

File bug

Crash ID 6e308e4f071b4146 (Chrome)

Occurred Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 9:38:06 AM

File bug

Thanks again for your great help with this!

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie Clark‌,

I got the error again this morning, but in stalled Flash Player 19 debugger (Flash Player for Opera and Chromium based applications – PPAPI) from Adobe's website: Download Adobe Flash Player 19 Beta for Desktops - Adobe Labs

I disabled the built-in Chrome Flash plugin and kept the beta PPAPI I downloaded enabled

Then I also changed a few things on Chrome that I found here: Hardware acceleration for flash videos in Google Chrome - Ask Different‌

"To force Chrome / Chromium to use hardware acceleration, open a new tab, type "chrome://flags" (without quotes), search for "Override software rendering list", enable it and restart Chrome / Chromium."

and

"From chrome://flags I disable "Disable hardware-accelerated video decode" and relaunch my Chrome browser."

I think it might've worked. I did not have to restart my laptop and the videos on YouTube, Facebook, and other sites started working again, whereas before, I'd have to clear my cache, browsing history, etc, and restart.

If other have similar problems like me, perhaps you can refer them to these steps..... But then again, with my luck, the error will come up again.

UPDATE: It happened again, but this time I could just close the tabs and go back to the page and watch the video without problems. This is weird, no? I don't understand my computer.

[jeromiec83223024]

I wouldn't use the debugger for general web browsing.  It's intended for Flash developers who are building content.  It's much slower than the release player because it's doing a bunch of extra work (tracing, etc) for the debugger, and (depending on how well-written the content is) can show a lot of pop-up error messages that would otherwise be suppressed in the general release player.

I can't do much with those crash reports.  If you have crash reporting turned on for Chrome, they're getting logged on Google's side already.  You can file a bug directly to the chromium bugbase from your browser if you'd like, and you can add me to the CC list, or post the bug number(s) here if you want.  I'll be happy to chat with the Chrome team about it.  I have a weekly call with them.

Is the issue on chrome specific for you, or do you have the same problems in IE? 

Also, can you give me the model number of your machine?  I want to make sure I'm getting the right one.  It looks like these are a couple years old, so I have to track one down used.

[vanchico]

Hi Jeromie Clark‌,

thanks for the reply. So far the Flash 19 debugger hasn't caused me any slowdowns or put up any out-of-the-ordinary error messages. The issue does occur on IE, but mostly occurred on Edge and Chrome. Never on Firefox. This issue has been logged onto Chromium (https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=537984), and it seems someone is working on it.

The model of my machine is a Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13, model # 20175, manufactured 2013-09-25.

Thanks for you help with this. Hopefully, something will come out of this to help solve the problem.

UPDATE: scratch that, with and without the debugger, the error has popped up again. I've uninstalled the debugger version and am back to square one

[vanchico]

So it seems that when I deleted/uninstalled Chrome before, I would still get the error or unresponsive behaviour in Edge and IE. But I uninstalled Chrome again, but I additionally deleted all Chrome files (e.g. from local app data) and now Edge and IE work fine. I can watch Youtube videos. Could it be that the Chrome files I had were corrupting my system? I even did a reset of Windows 10, but asked that my personal files be kept. Could the Chrome files in the local folders also have been kept and were the source of the problem?

[jeromiec83223024]

No, they're independent browsers with completely different copies of Flash Player.  IE/Edge and Firefox share some common Flash data, but Chrome is completely isolated.

When the symptoms get really weird and nonsensical, I start thinking hardware problems, but that's really hard to diagnose.  I don't have any good theories based on what you're seeing...

[vanchico]

Yeah, that's what I've been told already, but it's a coincidence I cannot dismiss. The Edge and IE browsers work fine now, whereas before, with Chrome around, Edge would be completely useless.