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

Firefox freezes with Flash player or HTML 5 when watching videos on Youtube

  • 9 iimpendulo
  • 45 inale ngxaki
  • 10 views
  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu semnc

more options

Hello everyone, This is driving me crazy! I've been trying to fix this a couple of times but no luck.

I'm trying to watch youtube videos on firefox and so whenever i try to enable flash player it just freezes my firefox...

I've uninstalled flash, installed latest/oldest, uninstalled firefox, restarted my comp, deleted the directory, disabled hardware acceleration, cleared cache and no luck...

When I use html 5 it doesn't freeze though I don't want to use it because it doesn't have 240p quality option.

Sometimes when flash player is enabled it doesn't freeze instantly only when i enable html5, play a video, close it then enable flash player addon then load the video which doesn't freeze until 3 mintues then freezes completely.

Ideas? Thank you.

Hello everyone, This is driving me crazy! I've been trying to fix this a couple of times but no luck. I'm trying to watch youtube videos on firefox and so whenever i try to enable flash player it just freezes my firefox... I've uninstalled flash, installed latest/oldest, uninstalled firefox, restarted my comp, deleted the directory, disabled hardware acceleration, cleared cache and no luck... When I use html 5 it doesn't freeze though I don't want to use it because it doesn't have 240p quality option. Sometimes when flash player is enabled it doesn't freeze instantly only when i enable html5, play a video, close it then enable flash player addon then load the video which doesn't freeze until 3 mintues then freezes completely. Ideas? Thank you.

All Replies (9)

more options

Recent crashes of certain multimedia contents (this includes Youtube videos, certain flash games and other applications) in conjunction with Firefox are most probably caused by a recent Flash 11.3 update and/or a malfunctioning Real Player browser plugin.

In order to remedy the problem, please perform the steps mentioned in these Knowledge Base articles:

Flash Plugin - Keep it up to date and troubleshoot problems

Adobe Flash plugin has crashed - Prevent it from happening again

Flash 11.3 doesn't load video in Firefox

Other, more technical information about these issues can be found under these Links:

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1018071?tstart=0

http://blogs.adobe.com/asset/2012/06/inside-flash-player-protected-mode-for-firefox.html


Please tell us if this helped!

more options

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

more options

yalam96 , I've tried these and it doesn't work... And i'm telling you it doesn't happen with only the latest flash.. I also tried downgrading and this happen so don't give me tutorials about flash 11.5....

cor-el, I don't get how that's supposed to help me? I don't want to use my pc on Safe mode with networking and besides my connection doesn't work on that mode.

I really need helpful answers and i'm very tired of trying.

Thanks.

more options

I had the same problems. My solution was to ditch FF 17 and downgrade to FF 16. I don't have any issues with 16, but I have little faith this will be fixed soon since I tried FF 18 beta, and it crashes all the time too. I may start using Chrome if FF doesn't become stable again.

more options

I downgraded all the way to Firefox 2 and it still freezes... I even tried the latest Firefox 18 beta and same thing ; (

more options

It seems that what could have caused it is that I always manually hit the power off switch instead of [ start > -- > Shutdown ] which might have corrupted files or probably didn't install flash correctly.

After I uninstalled - [ start - shutdown ] installed Firefox/Flash and again [ start - shutdown ] it seems that it loads longer then freezes.

I guess switching it off from the power button manually was a habit which no longer will persist.

more options

Have any of you tried activating the task manager and seeing if something is using most of your computer resources. Firefox's plugin-container.exe is pulling 99% of the CPU resources when this happens to me. Mozilla has not acknowledged this as a problem yet though it appears to have been going on for some time. Chrome plays the suspect videos fine.

more options

You can do a check for problems with current Flash plugin versions and try these:

  • disable protected mode in the Flash plugin (Flash 11.3+ on Windows Vista and later)
  • disable hardware acceleration in the Flash plugin
  • disable a possible RealPlayer Browser Record Plugin extension for Firefox and update the RealPlayer if installed
more options

cor-el, I believe that I have tried all of that. and the RealPlayer level is 16.01+. Can you or someone at firefox reproduce the problem with the link included? Thanks

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2013/05/10/the-ways-of-silicon-valley/?wpisrc=nl_tech_b

Ilungisiwe ngu semnc