Adobe Flash causes my computer to hang

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I have a problem with Adobe Flash on my new computer.

When I view embedded flash movies in either Firefox 3.5.4 or IE8 they cause the computer to lock up, it won’t even respond to mouse movement or control-alt-del. After I use the reset button to restart the computer I see nothing helpful in the event log. I can usually view the first 2 to 5 minutes of the flash movie, but then the computer locks up. This affects all web sites including YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

I am running the latest version of Flash (10.0.32.18) for both browsers.
I have the latest driver for my Asus ATi HD4890 graphics card
I have no problems with any other application
I can play DVDs using Microsoft Media player with no problems, so I guess the hardware is basically sound

Any suggestions?

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I have a problem with Adobe Flash on my new computer.

When I view embedded flash movies in either Firefox 3.5.4 or IE8 they cause the computer to lock up, it won’t even respond to mouse movement or control-alt-del. After I use the reset button to restart the computer I see nothing helpful in the event log. I can usually view the first 2 to 5 minutes of the flash movie, but then the computer locks up. This affects all web sites including YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

I am running the latest version of Flash (10.0.32.18) for both browsers.
I have the latest driver for my Asus ATi HD4890 graphics card
I have no problems with any other application
I can play DVDs using Microsoft Media player with no problems, so I guess the hardware is basically sound

Any suggestions?

Have you had Task Manager or something similar running to see what if your CPU is being 100% consumed?

Joe

--Joe

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Have you had Task Manager or something similar running to see what if your CPU is being 100% consumed?

Joe

‘frayed knot. I could try but it feels like a hard hang rather than a CPU bound thing, especially as this is a Quad core system so something would have to use up 400% CPU to do that!

I will try a spare graphics card that I have found, when I get time to take it to pieces, to see what that does.

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’frayed knot. I could try but it feels like a hard hang rather than a CPU bound thing, especially as this is a Quad core system so something would have to use up 400% CPU to do that!

I will try a spare graphics card that I have found, when I get time to take it to pieces, to see what that does.

Which OS? Service pack? Is Flash an update or clean install? Have yo uninstalled & reinstalled Flash?

Joe

--Joe

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Which OS? Service pack? Is Flash an update or clean install? Have yo uninstalled & reinstalled Flash?

Joe

Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit with all Windows Update patches
32 bit versions of IE8 and Firefox
I have never used any earlier version of flash on this computer (I’ve only had it a few days)
I tried a complete deinstall of Flash, reboot, run Flash Uninstall downloaded from here, and installing the debug version of flash from here – but it didn’t help.

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Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit with all Windows Update patches
32 bit versions of IE8 and Firefox
I have never used any earlier version of flash on this computer (I’ve only had it a few days)
I tried a complete deinstall of Flash, reboot, run Flash Uninstall downloaded from here, and installing the debug version of flash from here – but it didn’t help.

Have you tried clearing the cache for each browser?

Have you tried letting the video start then pausing it until the download it complete and then resuming the video?

Joe

--Joe

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Have you tried clearing the cache for each browser?

Have you tried letting the video start then pausing it until the download it complete and then resuming the video?

Joe

I will try both of those shortly, but I will finish this post first as when the computer hangs I am going to have to reset the computer and lose all my Windows.

To eliminate the graphics card and driver, I just swapped it out for an old graphics card from a different vendor. I started up an iPlayer session, a YouTube video and a video on the Guardian newspaper website and the PC locked up in less than a minute.

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Have you tried clearing the cache for each browser?

Have you tried letting the video start then pausing it until the download it complete and then resuming the video?

Joe

I really do not believe this. I cleared the cache on both browsers and I have just had 3 YouTube videos playing on one screen at the same time as an iPlayer session running full screen on the other monitor for about 35 minutes with no hang.

THANK YOU, it would never have occurred to me that this could be a browser cache problem.

I will confirm that it is still working in a couple of days.

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I really do not believe this. I cleared the cache on both browsers and I have just had 3 YouTube videos playing on one screen at the same time as an iPlayer session running full screen on the other monitor for about 35 minutes with no hang.

THANK YOU, it would never have occurred to me that this could be a browser cache problem.

I will confirm that it is still working in a couple of days.

You’re quite welcome. Amazing how often that little trick clears up strange problems.

Joe

--Joe

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You’re quite welcome. Amazing how often that little trick clears up strange problems.

Joe

I think I have discovered how the problem got into the cache of both browsers.

Does anyone else have problems playing this video http://www.guardian….ce-rosemary-lee

As soon as I tried playing this one again the hang happened, I have cleared the caches and it now all works again.

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I think I have discovered how the problem got into the cache of both browsers.

Does anyone else have problems playing this video http://www.guardian….ce-rosemary-lee

As soon as I tried playing this one again the hang happened, I have cleared the caches and it now all works again.

Hi Stuart

IE8 on Windows XP no problem

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No problem here either (IE8 on Windows XP SP3)

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No problem on a Windows 7 machine running IE 8.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The situation now is that if I play any flash video from the Guardian web site then I get the hang within a few minutes. If I play two of them at the same time then it hangs within 30 seconds.

I managed to play two streaming videos from different television channels and 3 different YouTube streams for about 3 hours this morning and then it hung again. Without the Guardian web site being involved.

So, I still have some kind of problem, but I have no idea what it could be.

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Hi Stuart

It seems that other people are reporting hangs with Windows 7, one answer suggests a cheap new card which seems to do the trick

’Videos hang in windows 7

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I have now seen this hang occur when I am not viewing a video, just editing a Word document, so it looks like it is just a hardware fault after all. Now I have to persuade the company that supplied this PC to fix it – given that they claim this must be a software fault this could take some time!

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I have now seen this hang occur when I am not viewing a video, just editing a Word document, so it looks like it is just a hardware fault after all. Now I have to persuade the company that supplied this PC to fix it – given that they claim this must be a software fault this could take some time!

For anyone that was interested in the outcome of this thread. I have got sick of typing meaningless updates in reply to unhelpful responses on the vendor’s web site and I have just written to their customer services saying that the computer is not fit for purpose and I want them to take it away and give my money back.

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For anyone that was interested in the outcome of this thread. I have got sick of typing meaningless updates in reply to unhelpful responses on the vendor’s web site and I have just written to their customer services saying that the computer is not fit for purpose and I want them to take it away and give my money back.

Yes we are interested in the outcome. The same problem may occur on any of our computers. Good luck with the original vendor and I hope you will keep us updated on the outcome

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Yes we are interested in the outcome. The same problem may occur on any of our computers. Good luck with the original vendor and I hope you will keep us updated on the outcome

I had a very similar problem on a computer I built for my wife, it would hang in facebook or any other web page that used flash and hang with office programs after some time. I was in a position to swap out various components as I was sure it was hardware related and sure enough when i changed the memory, voila a good computer. It turned out that the memory i had been supplied with “crucial ” had the wrong voltage but all other settings were the same! The supplier replaced the memory as it was their mistake and all is well.

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I had a very similar problem on a computer I built for my wife, it would hang in facebook or any other web page that used flash and hang with office programs after some time. I was in a position to swap out various components as I was sure it was hardware related and sure enough when i changed the memory, voila a good computer. It turned out that the memory i had been supplied with “crucial ” had the wrong voltage but all other settings were the same! The supplier replaced the memory as it was their mistake and all is well.

Nice suggestion. I will try removing half the memory and see what happens, then swap it for the other half.

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I had a very similar problem on a computer I built for my wife, it would hang in facebook or any other web page that used flash and hang with office programs after some time. I was in a position to swap out various components as I was sure it was hardware related and sure enough when i changed the memory, voila a good computer. It turned out that the memory i had been supplied with “crucial ” had the wrong voltage but all other settings were the same! The supplier replaced the memory as it was their mistake and all is well.

I removed half of the 8GB memory, and played some of the problematic Flash files. It hung within 10 minutes. I then swapped that for the other 4GB and it has been playing flash videos for the past 3 hours, which is very encouraging. If it doesn’t hang in the next 24 hours then I will award you the free

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