Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Adobe flash video constantly crashes when starting to play

more options

The flash player crashes every time I try to play a flash video in browser (vk videos as well as dailymotion and as well as youtube). Flash games are okay, though... Kongregate.com at the very least... At the same time google Chrome does not crash and plays video okay. There're no crash reports for these crashes in about:crashes. I tried downgrading flash to 10.3. I tried to update real player. I turned off hardware acceleration. Nothing helps! The video just crashes at the very first moment of playback.

PS: it all started recently. In august. There were no problems in July.

The flash player crashes every time I try to play a flash video in browser (vk videos as well as dailymotion and as well as youtube). Flash games are okay, though... Kongregate.com at the very least... At the same time google Chrome does not crash and plays video okay. There're no crash reports for these crashes in about:crashes. I tried downgrading flash to 10.3. I tried to update real player. I turned off hardware acceleration. Nothing helps! The video just crashes at the very first moment of playback. PS: it all started recently. In august. There were no problems in July.

All Replies (10)

more options

Adobe flash player is small in size so you can try redownloading it for a fast solution :) If that does not work please reply here.

more options

re-downloaded and reinstalled it several times yesterday. Did not help.

more options
more options

Completely uninstalled Real player and all real player plugins from Firefox (manually, deleting whole folders, found via plugin.expose_full_path and about:plugins). Still does not help.

more options

I have the exact same problem and I have also tried everything to try and fix it but nothing comes close to working

more options

I have just checked my plugins in: Firefox>Add-ons>Plugins. And I found that I have two shockwave flash plugins, could this be a part of the problem?

Here is a screenshot of the two plugins: http://gyazo.com/e39553a6f506dbc5c034da160e37e268.png

I hope I can fix this soon or else I won't be able to do much on Firefox anymore :(

more options

Partially solved by installing even older Flash 10.0: it works, but newer versions do not.

more options

Same problem here. Every new Shockwave version has gotten worse. I'm beginning to wonder if there's compatibility issues with the other plug-ins and/or add-ons I use?

Is there a Mozilla or Firefox 'tool' that checks the compatibility of the plug-ins and add-ons?

more options

Hi, um, Dogfart, to my knowledge there's no master database of which add-ons are compatible/incompatible. Some users have occasionally reported Silverlight conflicts, but rarely enough that I think they might be site-specific issues.

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

(1) Make sure all recorders/downloaders that interact with Flash media are as up-to-date as possible, or disable them.

(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/7/8)

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

more options

Hi Tennadear, I assume by now you disabled one of the two plugins ("Never Activate")? While Firefox might be a little less confused if one was physically deleted from disk, I would think disabling one of them should be enough for the moment.