CPU Overheating caused by Flash

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
October 4, 2012
2 replies
9286 views

It's since 2 months that I noted this "bad" behavior on my PC. And it really drives my crazy. The PC fan its becoming louder and louder, and the Pc is overheating fast when I open 3 or 4 YouTube tabs.

I tested everything (of things mentioned in this tread: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1043779?tstart=0), and nothing worked. I don't know what you do, but we centainly have to do something.

(I had Windows 7 Ultimate 64x), and a Sony Vaio with 4 GB RAM, Intel Core i3, and a 512M dedicated video. Everything worked fine til may-june... I only hardly heard the fan when I was exporting some video... but the PC was just fine and quiet.

I guess since july, the problem started, with the processor overheat. Later (September 10), I've installed Windows 8 PRO 64x RTM (final version) and the problem is still here. All the drivers and software versions ar updated. The overheating is terrible.

I can confirm that the problem it's not exclusive in Chrome. The problem it's in Internet Explorer 9, 10, and Firefox.

So, it's easy to understand that the problem is Flash plugin. It starts when I open some YouTube video, the same for every video player that uses Flash: Daylimotion, Vimeo, VK, etc... The processor peaks the 85º C and it's hard to put it down... only closing the browsers fix the problem.

I'm a designer, and I work with Flash Professional, and the same issue appears when I'm working with Flash. So: Please Adobe, it's your turn to fix that. Please go back to version 10 or 11.0... It can cause a serious problem to users and Adobe.

I love Flash, and it worked very well on my PC before, so please don't ruin it now!

If you are no taking this seriously, I will have to stop using Flash. I don't want my PC die.

(sorry for my english)

This topic has been closed for replies.

A

Anonymous

I have the same problem in IE9. I've gone thru all the recommendations including updating to the beta Flash 11.5. Nothing solves it. Adobe won't address the issue. They blame the websites for adjusting setting incorrectly but so far, as far as I know, Adobe hasn't offered to help websites with the problem. They aren't even trying to fix it in 11.5; it still occurs on certain websites. I contacted nbcnews.com and they say their techs will look into it.

I think it borders on criminal that Adobe designs software they know can damage people's computers by allowing developers to do something that Adobe knows should not be allowed. It's as if Adobe's Flash developers are trying to commit product suicide. Let's hope no one dies in a fire because of this.

Chris is trying to help but he's just delaying the inevitable. Flash is damaging computers worldwide and Adobe hides it's head in the ground. Not good PR; not good business; downright dangerous.

You can view my discussion at http://forums.adobe.com/message/4753975#4753975

jeromiec83223024

Inspiring

We understand your frustration, but it's surprising that you're running into this. When optimizing Flash Player for mobile devices, we made huge investments in optimizations to reduce general CPU usage, with an eye towards conserving battery life on mobile devices. While it's not inconceivable that you can peg the CPU on a desktop machine, it's going to be a problem that's more nuanced than a generalized defect and most likely involves complexities around your particular hardware and software combination, and the content you're viewing.

Flash Player, like any other application under Windows, has the ability to use available CPU cycles on the system. It does not possess magical powers that allow us to circumvent your system's thermal management. Your computer contains thermal sensors and fans that should cool your system as appropriate, and none of that overlaps with what we do. If you are finding that your system is overheating, you have a physical cooling problem that need to be addressed. Even if your CPU is pegged at 100%, it should not be overheating.

I'd recommend starting by removing any latent dust bunnies from your system with a can of compressed air, and then check out any thermal management settings on your system's BIOS. Most quality motherboards will give you temperature readouts for various critical components on the motherboard, and information about the performance of the attached fans.

There's a good thread here about thermal management, including techniques for stress-testing and validating your computer's cooling systems:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/100352-hardware-stress-test-prime95.html

That said, under normal circumstances, we really try to not peg the CPU, and we'd like to investigate further. We do test Windows 8 fairly extensively, (and we're working very closely with Microsoft's Win8 and IE10 teams, who are extremely experience-focused and also testing heavily), and we do not see this in lab conditions. The Win8 machine on my desk is definitely not displaying this problem. The best way for me to identify, debug and resolve any potential issue is to reproduce it here.

To do that, we're going to need some details about your system.

1.) What anti-virus and malware products to you have on your system. Please be specific, and include versions.

2.) Please provide the output of the DirectX Diagnostic Utility: (Click start > type "dxdiag" [enter]) -- Choose the Save option, and include the output of the file.

3.) Firefox provides the best debug output, so let's start there.

In Firefox, type about:support in the address bar, and copy the contents there

Type about:plugins and do the same

Type about:crashes, and see if you have any logged.

If so, if the name starts with "bp", then copy the link and included

If not, click the link to submit it, then copy the resulting URL.

Also, please keep in mind that each tab launches its own process and that their resource consumption is cummulative. If you can identify a few, specific URLs that are generating the spike in CPU usage in a single tab (and it would be good to validate this using the resource monitor instead of relying in the fans -- the thermal issue may be related to your GPU, and it would be good to differentiate), that would be very helpful. If you're seeing the CPU spike in a game with a ton of objects that are all animating simultanteously (some of the older, more popular Facebook games fall into this class), those do tend to be CPU intensive. Newer Flash features, like Stage3D are designed to offload this work to the GPU, which is purpose-built and handles these tasks much more efficiently, with less thermal load.

Best regards,

Jeromie Clark