Not a positive change!

When Firefox crashes, it 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 support article "Firefox Crashes" (especially the last section) for steps to get those crash IDs, and then post some of the recent ones here.

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 graphics acceleration in Firefox and in Flash

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

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced > General > "Use hardware acceleration when available"

(B) In Flash, see 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)

See this support article from Adobe under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

Any luck?

Thanks for the reply. Here's the link to the latest one:

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/index/3fcb14d2-ea74-469d-a004-8487b2131113

Thoughts?

Oddly, that crash report was dated Oct. 29. It is linked to a bug that typically occurs in an out-of-memory situation, but the crash report doesn't show an unusually high use of memory, so that seems to be a bit of a dead end.

I can't help noticing that you have many active extensions. Could you disable the nonessential ones for a day (the ones you can live without for 24 hours) and see whether that makes a difference?

Well that's odd!

There is one odd thing that might now show on those reports but for some reason, flash 9.0.45.0 runs at the same time as the most recent version of flash (see attached image).

Flash 9.0.45.0 is not installed in Windows, but shows up as an extension in FF.

Thoughts?

Regarding the extensions, will do.

Thanks!

Oops, it didn't attach the image, here goes again...

The old Flash DLL (NPSWF...) might have gotten physically copied into one of Firefox's folders. You could look for it here:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\Plugins

C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\browser\plugins

Ok, went in there and no "plugins" folder in sight!

You can see the full path to each plugin in the about:plugins list. Just enter about:plugins in the address bar. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:plugins

It's also possible that it got added to the plugin section of the registry by a different product that embedded it, but which is not updating. In that case, the path to it would be listed in the registry, and should appear on the about:plugins page (type or paste about:plugins in the address bar and press Enter). Any luck finding the duplicate DLL there?

If the DLL no longer physically exists, it could indicate that the plugin registry file is retaining obsolete data or has become corrupted. If you delete the file, Firefox will create a new one at the next startup.

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using

Help > Troubleshooting Information > "Show Folder" button

Leaving that window open, switch back to Firefox and Exit

Pause while Firefox finishes its cleanup, then rename pluginreg.dat to something like pluginreg.old

Restart Firefox. Any difference?

(Note: If other plugins go missing after that, it could indicate that registry scanning is turned off. The preference that controls this is plugin.scan.plid.all which defaults to true.)

@jscher2000 Yes, it shows up in the about:plugins page and the npswf32.dll is in the folder it points too.

Do I delete it?

Hi jorgebarba, you could delete it but if it's part of something else like an old authoring tool or Adobe Air, you also could either uninstall that host program or try updating it.

In which folder did you find the npswf32.dll file?

Yes, you can delete this npswf32.dll file and possibly other flash (xpt) files that have a similar date/time stamp.

@jscher2000 Great!

@cor-el I found it in c://windows/SysWOW64 it is dated from 2007

There is a flashplayer.xpt dated for today

FYI I deleted that .dll file and it doesn't appear in the plugins menu anymore.

My Firefox hasn't crashed since 5 PM yesterday. So who knows what's going on with this thing.

Anyway, @jscher2000, @cor-el and AliceWyman, thank you for your help :)

I'll come back here if it comes up again (hopefully not!)...

P.s. I found another bug.

Works perfectly on YouTube and other flash powered websites, but can't play videos on ESPN.com

Goes for Google Chrome too. Ended up watching the video on IE 11.

Have you guys encountered this problem before?

Thanks!

I get a lot of ads on ESPN.com... If you are blocking video pre-roll ads, that could be an issue for that site. Or do you only get the ads, which could indicate a problem with the handoff between the ad media server and ESPN?

I've used AdBlock Plus since they first started.

Disabled it on Espn.com just now, videos are playing again.

Crazy! Was always able to play videos with AdBlock on, never had this problem up until this latest Flash update.