Flash player crashes my computer every single time

[HFLep]

I have run into this problem yesterday, though I am not sure exactly why.  I updated the flash player to the latest 11.2 version on Firefox, and attempted to watch a video on the Reuters website.  I heard a few seconds of the video, and then the computer froze.  The screen went to black, and I had to reboot the system.

The same thing happened when I tried to watch the video with IE and Chrome.  I attempted to watch several other Flash videos on other websites, and had the exact same problem.

I have, by this point, uninstalled and reinstalled all of the web browsers, tried to reinstall the latest verion of 11.2 Flash, and attempted to uninstall 11.2 and install earlier versions (going back as far a 10.2).  Nothing seems to fix the problem.  I am, at this time, completely unable to watch any Flash video at all.  Strangely enough, I can see embedded Flash animations, like advertisements and whatnot.  The computer stops working ONLY if I attempt to watch a video.

I've uninstalled all of Adobe Flash at this point, and disabled it where I can't uninstall it (like Google Chrome) because the crashes and hard re-boots are not something I want to experience, even accidentally.  But what the heck is going on?

The system specs:

Dell Inspiron N7010

Intel core i3 CPU M350 @ 2.27 GHz

4 GB of RAM

64-Bit Windows 7

Graphics card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 (updated with the latest drivers).

[pwillener]

What is the full version of your installed Flash Player?  ("Latest" means nothing to me.)

What is the version & date of your display adapter's drivers?  ("Latest" means nothing to me.)

Does the crash stop when you disable Hardware Acceleration?

[HFLep]

Dear Pat,

The flash player version that originally crashed the computer was

11.2.202.228.  I then tried installing older versions, going down the list

on your archived downloads page to 10.2.153.1.  It kept on crashing the

computer.

The current version I have on is 11.1.102.63, after I did a system restore

to before the update.

The display driver is a Radeon 5470 version 8.692.1.0 from ATI, with its

date listed as 1/22/2010.  When I attempt to update it, the computer claims

that the driver is up-to-date after a search for a new driver on-line.

Lastly, turning off the hardware acceleration does seem to fix the

problem--no more crashes, and the videos run fine, at least with

11.1.102.63.  I don't know how the hardware acceleration got turned on in

the first place, or if it was turned on, how it started crashing the

computer.

I hope this helps answer your questions.

[chris.campbell]

It's possible you might be able to update your GPU drivers, though this depends on the laptop manufacturer.  Here's a ATI application that will determine the eligibility of your system:

http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/radeonmob_win7-64.aspx

[HFLep]

Yeah, I have that already. That's how I checked whether the driver was the

latest one.

[pwillener]

Not quite sure how to interpret your reply: have you actually updated the video drivers?  If so, what is this driver version and date?

[HFLep]

I have, and I sent you the video driver information in the first reply.

Here it is again:

The display driver is a Radeon 5470 version 8.692.1.0 from ATI

[Guest]

HFLep wrote:

The display driver is a Radeon 5470 version 8.692.1.0 from ATI, with its date listed as 1/22/2010.  When I attempt to update it, the computer claims that the driver is up-to-date after a search for a new driver on-line.

According to AMD (which owns ATI), the latest driver for your graphics solution is v8.951 released on 3/28/2012. Here's the link I used: http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

And here's a screenshot of what I selected from the dropdown menus.

[HFLep]

It seems the updating software has changes since I downloaded the previous

version. Yes, when I used this version, I got 8.951 as well now. I also

just installed the latest version of Flash (the automatic update came out

today or yesterday), and it works, though I have not tried it with hardware

acceleration yet.

[PuebloDamascus]

I have a very similar setup to the original poster and am suffering the exact same symptoms. This has caused me enormous frustration, as I have gone through hours of installing different components, testing, freezing, and restarting in attempts to troubleshoot this.

I have had my laptop computer for over a year and never had any problem with it. Then, a few days ago, I updated the Flash player to the latest version, 11.2. After doing so, every attempt to watch online Flash-dependent videos resulted in a few seconds of audio but no video, followed by the computer freezing, thereby forcing me to restart the entire machine through a hard reset. Sometimes, after a while, a blue screen of death also resulted.

This happened regardless of what browser I tried --- Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera --- and it only happened when I attempted to watch Flash videos (for example, Flash-based advertisements worked fine).

My set-up is very similar to the original poster's:

Dell Inspiron 15R

Intel Core i3-370M (2.4Gz)

4 GB RAM

Win7 64-Bit

ATI Mobility Radeon HD550v graphics card

I uninstalled and reinstalled Flash, but still froze upon playing any video. I tried installing older versions of Flash player, going all the way back to 10.0.22.87; videos still inevitably froze my computer and forced a hard reset, even though those older versions had worked fine before the original update to 11.2.

I can get the videos to play and avoid freezing my computer if I turn off hardware acceleration, but something is definitely wrong with the new update, considering that hardware acceleration was previously working fine before it.

[pwillener]

PuebloDamascus wrote:

I can get the videos to play and avoid freezing my computer if I turn off hardware acceleration

In that case you should update the device drivers for your graphics card; see http://forums.adobe.com/thread/945765

[PuebloDamascus]

Pat Willener wrote:

PuebloDamascus wrote:

I can get the videos to play and avoid freezing my computer if I turn off hardware acceleration

In that case you should update the device drivers for your graphics card; see http://forums.adobe.com/thread/945765

I did that already, before my earlier post. I both used Windows Update, and I went to AMD's ATI site to get the latest display driver (8.961.0.0000). It doesn't matter:

with Flash 10.3.183.18, videos cause computer to freeze if hardware acceleration is enabled

with Flash 11.2.202.233, videos cause computer to freeze regardless of if hardware acceleration is enabled (that is, even with hardware acceleration disabled, computer still freezes)

And again, this only started to happen after I updated to Flash 11.2 a few days ago; before that, Flash was working totally fine.

[pwillener]

Is that the driver that was released this week (Apr/25)?

[PuebloDamascus]

Pat Willener wrote:

Is that the driver that was released this week (Apr/25)?

Yes, these freezing problems when playing videos started happening immediately after I updated Flash around that date.

A couple more details on the symptoms: when I attempt to play a Flash video, what will happen is that one of two things will happen (1) the entire system (not just the video or the browser) will freeze immediately or (2) the browser will freeze immediately, and it then takes a few more seconds for the entire system to freeze.

In the latter case, the browser (whether it is Firefox, Opera, or IE; the same occurs with all three) will then start to eat up 100% of whichever CPU/core that the process is running on. During those few seconds before the entire system freezes, I have attempted to use Task Manager, as well as Microsoft Sysinternals Process Explorer and, through the command-line, PSKILL and TASKKILL, to try to kill the browser process before the entire machine locks up, but they have no effect.

The thing is, previous versions of Flash were working fine on my machine before that new update. Now, I have to go back to an older version of Flash AND disable hard acceleration with that older version to avoid the freezing, despite older versions of Flash originally working fine before the new update. It seems as if the new update somehow damaged some component or left some permanent change on the system, so that, even after being uninstalled, it affects even older versions of Flash.

[Guest]

PuebloDamascus wrote:

Pat Willener wrote:

PuebloDamascus wrote:

I can get the videos to play and avoid freezing my computer if I turn off hardware acceleration

In that case you should update the device drivers for your graphics card; see http://forums.adobe.com/thread/945765

I did that already, before my earlier post. I both used Windows Update, and I went to AMD's ATI site to get the latest display driver (8.961.0.0000). It doesn't matter:

with Flash 10.3.183.18, videos cause computer to freeze if hardware acceleration is enabled

with Flash 11.2.202.233, videos cause computer to freeze regardless of if hardware acceleration is enabled (that is, even with hardware acceleration disabled, computer still freezes)

And again, this only started to happen after I updated to Flash 11.2 a few days ago; before that, Flash was working totally fine.

I checked Dell's site for your model and according to the specs, the video chip in that machine is an Intel HD graphics 3000, not an ATI Mobility Radion HD550v like you mentioned. For the UK version, see: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd if you live in the USA.

[PuebloDamascus]

Xircal wrote:

I checked Dell's site for your model and according to the specs, the video chip in that machine is an Intel HD graphics 3000, not an ATI Mobility Radion HD550v like you mentioned. For the UK version, see: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd if you live in the USA.

Dell lets you choose and customize the parts when you buy from them. My machine was custom-ordered to have the Radeon HD550v (which is basically a rebranded Radeon 4650), and Device Manager provides additional confirmation of the chip's identity.

[Guest]

PuebloDamascus wrote:

Xircal wrote:

I checked Dell's site for your model and according to the specs, the video chip in that machine is an Intel HD graphics 3000, not an ATI Mobility Radion HD550v like you mentioned. For the UK version, see: http://www.dell.com/uk/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15r-n5110/pd if you live in the USA.

Dell lets you choose and customize the parts when you buy from them. My machine was custom-ordered to have the Radeon HD550v (which is basically a rebranded Radeon 4650), and Device Manager provides additional confirmation of the chip's identity.

OK, understood.

But if you don't mind me asking, why would you choose to downgrade to graphics which only supports Direct3D 10.1 (a.k.a. DirectX 10.1)? Here are some stats for the 550v: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-550v.31270.0.html

No offence, but I would have thought you'd have been better off with the Radeon 5800 which offers support for Direct3D 11.0: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/graphics/ati-mobility-hd-5800/Pages/ati-mobility-hd-5800.asp... After all, technology is moving forwards, not backwards.

[PuebloDamascus]

Xircal wrote:

OK, understood.

But if you don't mind me asking, why would you choose to downgrade to graphics which only supports Direct3D 10.1 (a.k.a. DirectX 10.1)? Here are some stats for the 550v: http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-550v.31270.0.html

No offence, but I would have thought you'd have been better off with the Radeon 5800 which offers support for Direct3D 11.0: http://www.amd.com/us/products/notebook/graphics/ati-mobility-hd-5800/ Pages/ati-mobility-hd-5800.as... After all, technology is moving forwards, not backwards.

None taken. As I mentioned earlier, I bought my machine over a year ago. At that time, Dell was either offering the 5800 for the Inspiron 15R only at a much higher price that I did not want to pay, or more likely, not offering the 5800 at all for the 15R.

[Guest]

This is not a hardware issue.  It's a Flashplayer 11.2 issue.  Various crashes can occur with 11.2 on any video card brand.  To fix the problem. (1.) Unisntall 11.2; (2.) Install 10.3.  Viewing videos all over the place will then work fine.  You will not need to upgrade your video drivers.

Uninstallers and 10.3 are here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

[PuebloDamascus]

user0987654321 wrote:

This is not a hardware issue.  It's a Flashplayer 11.2 issue.  Various crashes can occur with 11.2 on any video card brand.  To fix the problem. (1.) Unisntall 11.2; (2.) Install 10.3.  Viewing videos all over the place will then work fine.  You will not need to upgrade your video drivers.

Uninstallers and 10.3 are here: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Please read what I wrote above more carefully. As I explained, I already did uninstall 11.2 and replace it with 10.3, but now 10.3 doesn't work properly anymore either (it now requires hardware accel to be disabled), even though before last week's update, and ever since I first got the laptop over a year ago, Flash had always previously been working fine even with hardware accel enabled.

[Guest]

I've since upgraded to 11.3.2 beta, and am no longer have crashes/odd results when viewing online videos set up to use Flash.  Interestingly YouTube is no longer showing me videos using the Adobe Flash Player, it is using somethng called HTML5.  Very quick, no crash, and good view quality.  Perhaps one does not need Flash for YouTube videos after all?

I was forced to upgrade to 11.3.2 beta because everytime I tried to view something that used 10.3, the flash player wouldn't show it to me unless I upgraded (to 11.2).

Yet another example af Adobe debugging their products on their users.

[Guest · Accepted solution]

[SOLUTION]

I have been dealing with this problem today - I built a brand new computer with a clean install of Win 7 x64 - and the computer would crash and lock up with a black screen on playing videos on youtube etc - this happened in IE9 32bit and 64 bit, and Chrome, but interesting did not happen with Firefox.

Again this was with an ATI card and the latest video driver (8.9), and with Flash 11.2.

Having spent some time debugging and looking fo soltions I cam across this thread and noted that the last user had resolved his issue by using the latest BETA version of Flash 11.3.  I therefore installed these on the computer, and low and behold everything works perfectly, problem resolved.  I also remember a similar problem happening around late 2011 with one of the 10.x version and ATI drivers.

Interestingly in all my searching for info on this problem, the common factor was ATI graphics cards - I found no one having this issue with any other chipset, and it seemt o be also exclusively Win 7 x64.  In additon the symptom was always a hard freeze with a black screen - there was never a BSOD or any errors message.

As a result I am now convinced that this is a compatibilty issue between the 11.2 Flash player and the current ATI Radeon HD graphics driver.

Hope this information proves useful to the Adobe devs, and to anyone else reading this thread with the same problem.

[Guest]

I had a black screen event on a youtube video yesterday, even though I'm on 11.3beta (which has been working great for weeks).  Youtube automatically "signed up" some users to test their new HTML5 video process which replaces FLASH as a viewer.  The black screen (which disables all video, but programs continue to run) occured when Youtube switched the video in question over to display it in HTML5.  So I "un registered" as an HTML5 testee (which Youtube allows you to do).  For good measure I turned off acceleration in FLASH -- which the majority of reporters of this problem claim is the root cause of the problem.  The video in question and others play fine now. I have an Nvidia GTS 250 display card with the latest Nvidia drivers installed.  Regardless of whether 11.3beta or turning off acceleration in FLASH circumvents your problem, this is still an Adobe software bug issue.  Based on my experience with Adobe for many years, all of a sudden it will start working, with Adobe never admitting to a software bug.

[chris.campbell]

user987, I don't understand your problem.  It sounds like you had an issue with YouTube's HTML5 player which you've opted out ot.  But then, for some reason, you disabled Flash's hardware acceleration.  What was the reason for this?  Since you apparently have the latest NVidia drivers and a recent card, I'd highly recommend turning this back on for better performance.

Can you explain what bug you're running into with the 11.3 beta?