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Firefox crashes while playing videos

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Crashing happens mostly when streaming video, Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, Showtime, Direct TV. I've updated Firefox, addons, plugins and silverlight.

Crashing happens mostly when streaming video, Netflix, Amazon, Youtube, Showtime, Direct TV. I've updated Firefox, addons, plugins and silverlight.

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When Firefox crashes, or when one of the plugins in a page crashes, Firefox usually records information about what was happening at that moment. You can submit that data to Mozilla and share it with forum volunteers to see whether it points to the solution. Please check the last section of this support article "Firefox Crashes" for steps to get those crash report IDs.

Note: if you Ctrl+click the IDs, you should get pages for each one on the crash-stats server and you can see what's in them.


This is some standard guidance that addresses the most common issues with the Flash Player plugin. I'm sure you've seen some of it before, but just in case:

(1) If you have any recorders/downloaders that interact with Flash media make sure they are as up-to-date as possible, or disable them temporarily.

(2) Disable hardware acceleration in Firefox and in Flash

(A) In Firefox, un-check the box here:

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced > General > "Use hardware acceleration when available"

That takes effect the next time you exit and start Firefox up again.

(B) In Flash, right-click the media and choose Settings, then the first mini-tab and uncheck the box to use hardware acceleration. More information in this support article from Adobe: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html#main_Solve_video_playback_issues

(3) Disable protected mode (Windows Vista and higher)

The protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin has security benefits, but seems to have compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it by creating or editing a settings file. The following pages/posts provide different approaches for that:

Flash needs to completely unload from memory (exiting and starting Firefox up again might help) before this takes effect.

Any improvement?