Shockwave Flash Player crashing constantly in Firefox
This started a few days ago when I would try to open videos and a message would pop up saying Shockwave Flash isn't working. Now whenever I try to open any website I get a message saying Warning: Unresponsive Plugin. Sometimes this message pops up and then closes and repeats itself several times, and basically freezes Firefox. I tried testing the Flash player on the Adobe website, and I can load HTML5 videos, but not non-HTML5 ones. I've uninstalled and reinstalled both Adobe Flash and Shockwave Flash, but there was no improvement. This has made Firefox extremely difficult to use. Is there anything I can do?
All Replies (3)
Crashes or other problems with certain multimedia content in Firefox (such as Youtube videos and Flash animations or games) can often be resolved by performing the steps in these Knowledge Base articles:
On Windows Vista and above, you can disable Flash protected mode by following the instructions on these pages:
- http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1018071#TemporaryWorkaround
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Flash#Disabling_Protected_Mode_in_Flash_11.3
(See this Adobe blog post for technical details about Flash protected mode.)
For recent updates for Adobe Shockwave Flash, please update your version to 14.
Please refer to the security updates and Adobe Security Bulletin for more information.
Please tell us if this helped!
If it is helpful at all, I have Windows 8.1 and Shockwave Flash 16.0.0.235.
I tried all of the solutions on the top three links, and none of them worked. I attempted to disable Flash protected mode, but when I tried opening the file in Notepad it was full of symbols that resembled suns and the page seemed to go on infinitely.
Because none of the solutions worked, I simply disabled the Flash Player. Things seem to be working now, and I can watch videos and load pages normally. But will keeping the plugin disabled work long-term?
It is possible that the page could have some html5 video elements in it such as mp4 or webm file format as an example, but if a site requires flash and does not support mp4, then keeping it disabled will not make the site function properly. example youtube has an support for all the above.
Lets try a simple test. re-enable flashplugin
I make no promises that it will work, however, no harm done, and can always revert to Chrome. I use it along FF
Close all Firefox windows. We will also need to make sure some support files are closed as well that relate to Firefox.
open a cmd window ( you need to be admin ) and copy/paste the following, then press enter after each one, or if you are knowledgeable about bat files simply make one and drop the contents in it:
taskkill.exe /im plugin-container.exe /f
taskkill.exe /im firefox.exe /f
taskkill.exe /im iexplore.exe /f
taskkill.exe /im flash* /f
del C:\Windows\Prefetch\PLUGIN-CONTAINER*.pf
del C:\Windows\Prefetch\flashpl*.pf
del C:\Windows\Prefetch\firefox*.pf
del C:\Windows\Prefetch\PLUGIN-HANG*.pf
Relaunch Firefox and go to the page and see if the issue still exists, is it better or not, does it work for a while or not at all
Best regards