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Firefox frequently hangs when loading websites with Flash video.

  • 4 replies
  • 94 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by guitou78

Blackadder
Blackadder
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Firefox frequently completely freezes when viewing Flash video and the only way to release it is to manually kill the plugin-container process.

This have been verified with several Firefox versions, upto and including 3.6.10 and upto the lastest Flash release on systems running Windows 7 64-bit. This have been tested on multiple installations, different systems and on clean installations. However only tested on 64-bit HP systems so far.

Running Firefox with "Run as Administrator" enabled or with compatibility mode set to "Windows XP SP2" seems to solve the problem, but that solution is not good considering the security and performance problems following with that.

Firefox frequently completely freezes when viewing Flash video and the only way to release it is to manually kill the plugin-container process. This have been verified with several Firefox versions, upto and including 3.6.10 and upto the lastest Flash release on systems running Windows 7 64-bit. This have been tested on multiple installations, different systems and on clean installations. However only tested on 64-bit HP systems so far. Running Firefox with "Run as Administrator" enabled or with compatibility mode set to "Windows XP SP2" seems to solve the problem, but that solution is not good considering the security and performance problems following with that.

All Replies (4)

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Make sure that you have allowed the plugin-container process in the firewall.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins

Blackadder
Blackadder Question owner
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I have done some more testing and the problem seems to have been found:

Windows 7 64-bit with Firefox and Flash works fine until HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite is installed. That combination makes Flash video playback hang frequently. Uninstallation of HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite fixes the problem.

Flash video playback works fine with Windows 7 64-bit and HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite using the browsers Internet Explorer and Chrome instead of Firefox.

At the moment I can not tell if the error is with Firefox, Flash or HP Protect Tools.

I am using the latest versions of Firefox, Flash and HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite at the time of writing, including latest Windows security patches.

HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite installation file name used for this is sp48447.exe.

Blackadder
Blackadder Question owner
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Some more details: It's the Single Sign On feature in HP ProtectTools Security Manager Suite that is in some way not working with Firefox and Flash. Disabling SSO fixes the problem, but the root of this should be fixed.

Exactly why this happens only in Firefox I do not know.

I have also reported this to HP.

guitou78
guitou78
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Hello It happens on my ASUS laptop, too, and didn't happen six months ago. So I think that HP software suite is not the cause.

And yes, it only occurs when watching Flash videos on firefox (youtube...). Watching the same on IE works perfectly.

It is a pain, I hope that this problem is currently under investigation by the FF team.

Hope this helps!