Adobe Community: Windows 7 Flash Video Kills Network!

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1. ADOBEGungan,

Feb 9, 2010 5:38 AM in reply to zdiggler

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I am losing connection to my gateway as well.

My setup is as follows:

Windows 7 Home Edition 64-bit (Fresh Install)
3.0 Ghz Core 2 Duo
4 GB PC3200 Ram
768 MB Geforce GTX 260
EVGA nForce 780i SLI Mobo (w/ 2x 1 Gb nForce Network Adapters)

Tried the following versions of Flash Player with identical results (used the uninstall_flash_player.exe utility from Adobe when switching):

10.0.42.34
10.1 beta 2

Tried the following web browers with identical results:

IE8 32-bit
IE8 64-bit (not officially supported by Flash Player)
Firefox 3.6

The way it happens for me is as follows:

If I open nothing but a web browser, everything will work fine when accessing flash content unless I need to refresh a page multiple times, at which point my network connection will drop out.
If I am running an online game, FTP client, torrent client, Ventrilo or anything else that maintains an active connection to the internet, any attempt to access a flash site on my part will drop my network connection.
Uninstalling Flash Player fully corrects the problem, but that isn't really an option with a large percentage of sites employing flash now is it?
At no point in time is my laptop running Windows XP 32-bit SP3 unable to access the same site that I am trying to access with my Windows 7 64-bit PC, nor does it lose its network connection in doing so.
All of my other network devices including said laptop still have full access to my home network and the internet, which means the problem is not with my router.
The PC currently running Windows 7 64-bit previously ran with Windows XP 32-bit SP3 on the exact same hardware, and had no problems at all related to Flash Player or network outages.
When the network connection is lost, I have to disable and re-enable my network adapater in order to restore a connection to my home network. The network diagnostic wizard identifies the problem as "The default gateway could not be found."

I would like to see a solution to this problem yesterday. It is beyond my comprehension how such a serious issue can go without comment or correction for nearly 2 months. I'm seriously surprised that Microsoft isn't pounding on Adobe's door for this because it is making it appear like Windows 7 is the culprit (and that was my original hypothesis too) when you go from a fully functional Windows XP setup to a Windows 7 setup that can't maintain a network connection just browsing the internet.

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2. zdiggler,

Feb 9, 2010 2:23 PM in reply to ADOBEGungan

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Hmm... Interesting.

Win7 32bit

Here is my Hardware setup.

Mainboard Model M2N-SLI DELUXE

nForce 570SLI

nVidia nForce 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet

Driver Provider Nvidia

Version 73.14.0

Date : 7/30/09

All hardware setting Default.

Extra info Router is Buffalo with DD-WRT, nothing has change on it from XP to Vista to 7 and never ever had network issues unless Comcast crap out.

====

I tried to kill by running bit torrent, downloading a large linux disto, same time copy a few movies to my. browse the web page with a lot and lots of pictures, made a scrip to goto next page over and over again, streaming a HD movie to WDTVLive for 15 min no problem. Until I open up Youtube and 15sec in to video network drop right out!!

Flash Games and ads no problem. Only seems to be on videos.

Its weird, only thing in common here is a nForce.

I'll find a old PCI ethernet card and see if it fix the problem..

I attached a CPU-z Report about my system.

Attachments:

MY-PC-7.txt.zip (11.2 K)

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3. ADOBEGungan,

Feb 9, 2010 5:30 PM in reply to zdiggler

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EVGA seems to have released a new nForce 15.53 beta driver pack (EVGA tech support guy just told me on their support line), which updates the network driver version to 73.2.0.0.

The guy from EVGA said Windows 7 had a lot of issues with nForce ethernet controllers since it came out, to the point where people could not connect to a network at all. In any case, I was sure I had the most recent drivers, but I guess I haven't checked for updates in the last 3 weeks, and Windows Update clearly doesn't distribute beta drivers.

I don't want to jump the gun and celebrate too early, but I don't seem to be losing my network connection with online games running anymore. Hopefully this is a permanent fix - to the most frustrating problem I've ever had with a PC.

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4. Curtis LeMay,

Mar 2, 2010 3:36 PM in reply to zdiggler

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zdiggler,

Agreed. Flash 10 has been an unmitigated disaster, imho, and should be pulled.

I can either watch flash video online...or browse the 'Net - NOT BOTH at the same time. I lose my 'Net connection after about 15 secs if I am viewing a flash video stream. Then it's time for the "reset LAN adapter" maybe about three or four times before I get "net connectivity back. Happens 99 out of a 100 times...

I can't even rollback to 9 as every time I tried to install the olcer version I'd get the message saying there's a newer version pf flash available and that I must download instead.

Running Windows 7 Enterprise on one box, Ultimate on another (both X64) and it happens IDENTICALLY on both. IE8, Nvidia Quadros, Dual Xeon 5160's...

The QA dept at Adobe let a huge bug get oit the door.

FIND IT!

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5. zdiggler,

Mar 2, 2010 3:43 PM in reply to Curtis LeMay

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I'm sorry I didn't update the post, I just got a PCI-E 1x Ethernet card installed on my PC and I have not have to reset the adapter or do windows 7 diag to fix the problem. Some time while playing video it still show "!" and video stop but in a few sec it restores the connection by if self. But it happens extremely rare than built in nforce ethernet.

Yeah, so there still issue.

Browse, play multiplayer game, stream video using non flash based method NO hickups, until try to play a flash based video.

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6. Curtis LeMay,

Mar 2, 2010 3:54 PM in reply to zdiggler

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zdiggler,

I am curious. What's your 'Net connection speed? I am in the Virgin Islands and typically I get 1mb to 1.25mb per second.

Not very fast, but certainly fast enough for YouTube, Hula, etc, right? (In terms of bandwith)

I wonder if Flash10 has a bug with how it governs I/O speeds?

Or, more likely, poorly written (bloated) code is showing up under stress (hence stress testing apps and the like...) ?

Seems that when I am watching some flash stream, the stream maxes out at the 1/1.25mb's right away and then flash simply chokes after 15 secs or so.

Regards

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7. zdiggler,

Mar 2, 2010 4:14 PM in reply to Curtis LeMay

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20MB/sec on Cable.

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8. zdiggler,

Mar 2, 2010 4:19 PM in reply to zdiggler

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Yeah, probably PING of Death because of bad coding and nVidia chipset doesn't have any protection for it.

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9. Curtis LeMay,

Mar 2, 2010 4:47 PM in reply to zdiggler

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20mb? Nice!

So, speed - per se - is likely not the problem.

It's got to ne something fundamental, then.

WInsock issues?

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10. Curtis LeMay,

Mar 3, 2010 4:02 PM in reply to zdiggler

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zdiggler,

Do you have QOS Packet Scheduler ON by any chance?

If so, turn it off...and see what happens.

Regards

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11. zdiggler,

Mar 3, 2010 4:46 PM in reply to Curtis LeMay

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It was off, that was one of the I suspected, Only thing check was MS network, print file share and ipv4, it was still having problem.

With new card I'm not having any problem at all with everything checked by deafult.

Pretty weird.

Before I get the new card, I have ping 192.168.1.1 -t running on background as well as ping google.com -t

When flash video play and pause at 9sec computer won't reach to 192.168.1.1 until you do windows connection Diag.

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12. Windows7Guy,

Mar 12, 2010 7:10 AM in reply to zdiggler

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Hello zdiggler,
For the network card, did you check out the Windows 7 Compatibility site: (There you will find out about hardware and software compatibilty.)
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/en-us/default.aspx
There is a pulldown from which you can choose "hardware" and "software".

There are also some great articles, instructional videos and such to help with your Windows 7 at our Springboard site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx

In any event a lot of the times, Vista drivers will work in lieu of Windows 7 drivers, however, it's not 100%!

As stated previously, it's best to have the Windows 7 certified drivers installed.
Thanks again,
John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support

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13. jlagreca,

Oct 30, 2010 1:13 PM in reply to zdiggler

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I am having the same problem on a brand new 21.5" iMac i3 3.07 GHz. I installed bootcamp and Windows 7 32 bit. Everything works great, until I visit a page with flash. I can duplicate the problem on grooveshark.com and youtube.com. I have tried the latest version of flash 10.1.85.3 as well as the beta 10.2.161.23.

Whats interesting to note, is that when the problem occurs, I can solve it instantly by closing the browser that is running flash. A few seconds after closing, network traffic begins to pass again.

My guess is an incompatibility with flash and an installed device driver. Whats even more interesting is that when I boot into OSX and launch the bootcamp partition via Vmware Fusion, flash functions with no problem. I only run into the problem when I boot into Windows 7 natively (aka bootcamp).

Did anyone ever figure out a solution to the problem?

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14. jlagreca,

Oct 30, 2010 2:54 PM in reply to jlagreca

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In case anyone is interested, I cross posted my problem on the apple forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=12507706

Another interesting twist in the saga of flash taking down Windows networking...

I uninstalled flash using adobe flash uninstaller tool (http://goo.gl/F92l), then installed an older version 9.0.280.0 (http://goo.gl/SEfo), and the problem is now mostly gone. I say mostly, because grooveshark.com now works, as do most youtube videos, but I was able to cause the problem again via one youtube video.

Also Chrome was a bit trickier because it comes with flash pre-installed. However you can revert to and older version by browsing to about:plugins (http://goo.gl/cG9o), expand details, then disable Flash 10, while leaving Flash 9 enabled.

This is not really a great solution, as this older version is probably riddled with security holes, but it's my only solution at the moment.

This example just shows how flawed Windows and Flash really are... How can a modern operating systems network be taken down by a browser plugin?!?!

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15. zdiggler,

Oct 30, 2010 10:58 PM in reply to jlagreca

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Is your Mac using nForce/Nvidia chip for ethernet? I think the problem is related to card driver than Flash itself. I replace mine with different card and I have no more problem.

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16. jlagreca,

Oct 31, 2010 9:22 AM in reply to zdiggler

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I also suspect a bad driver. However, the computer is a 21.5" iMac, so I cannot change out the hardware to test.

This mac has a Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet card, Atheros AR928X Wireless Network Adapter, and an ATI Radeon HD 4670 display adapter.

Apple supplied the drivers via their BootCamp software, so I contacted them to see if they knew of any issues. But as I suspected, they had no idea, and told me to contact Microsoft.

Dropping back to an older version of flash seems to have helped the problem somewhat. But it still occurs, just much less frequently.

So it looks like I'm out of luck, until Apple decides to update their drivers. If anyone else knows more about the problem, please let us know. Thanks!

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Windows 7 Flash Video Kills Network!

Feb 7, 2010 9:36 PM

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