620328 - Firefox crashing on Flash, I may have some new useful information to help with debugging

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[shause2]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101203 Firefox/3.6.13

Popup window
A script in this movie is causing Flash Player 10.whatever to run slowly.  If you allow this script to continue to run your operating system may become unresponsive.

I used task manager and clicked on plugin container for Mozilla Firefox when an embedded youtube video froze up.  The plugin did NOT, I repeat REFUSED to shut down, it was locked up.  BUT, as soon as I did this, a popup window IMMEDIATELY and I mean IMMEDIATELY popped up in window of the imbedded video saying "The Flash Plugin has crashed" showing a big unhappy face and under that it said click here to reload the page or something such like.

When I did this, the same above popup window came up, about an unresponsive script.  But, Firefox was hanging and the blue 'locked up' donut appeared and I could not choose either yes or no to stop the script or allow it to run.  HOWEVER, after about 60 seconds or maybe a couple of minutes, the video DID come up and played beautifully, no problems, nada.  Except one.  The progress bar was filled to the end, and I had NO control over the video window.  I could not pause/play the video, I could not move the slider in the progress bar to back the video up.  NOTHING.  But the movie played through to the end.

I don't know what problem, whether Firefox or Flash, is causing this.  But, hopefully this will allow the problem to be fixed.  I know that I and countless other 1,000's (10,000's of 1,000's?) hope that the problem can be fixed SOON.  Hopefully, the above description can help with this solution.

P.S. :  I am running Windows Vista Home Premium, with all updates and latest service packs, it's up to date.  I am running Firefox 3.6.13, latest version I know of.  I am running Shockwave Flash 10.1r102 latest version of Flash and it is up to date according to Mozilla Plugin Check.  I have followed the instruction on the support page "The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed" http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The%20Adobe%20Flash%20plugin%20has%20crashed, going into about:config and changing the setting for dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to -1.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a flash video site.
2. Click on a video to play it, a long one and flash and firefox freezed for quite a while.
3. Play shorter video it MIGHT not happen, but usually does.  HOWEVER, if you click on another video after that one played through, I don't remember it ever NOT freezing on the 2nd video and any thereafter
Actual Results:  
the same thing

Expected Results:  
That the video would play, smoothly without freeze

Comment 1

[shause2]

Until I used task manager to try to kill Plugin Container for Firefox, the above things never happened, it would freeze for a minute or 2, then start playing again or not.  Would either have to reload the page or restart Firefox all-together to watch the video.  Only when I used task manager to try to kill the Plugin Container did the above things happen.

Comment 2

[Jim Mathies [:jimm]]

(In reply to comment #0)
> P.S. :  I am running Windows Vista Home Premium, with all updates and latest
> service packs, it's up to date.  I am running Firefox 3.6.13, latest version I
> know of.  I am running Shockwave Flash 10.1r102 latest version of Flash and it
> is up to date according to Mozilla Plugin Check.  I have followed the
> instruction on the support page "The Adobe Flash plugin has crashed"
> http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The%20Adobe%20Flash%20plugin%20has%20crashed,
> going into about:config and changing the setting for
> dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs to -1.

Doing this basically disables features that recover from a frozen flash player. If flash locks up, firefox will not shut it down with this set to -1. You might try setting it to around 15 or 30 seconds.

Comment 3

[shause2]

Thanks Jim but I already tried that, and it was running with that -1 setting.  I had this problem a long time ago, found a page on the web that told how to fix it and it worked.  Can't remember the address of that page (oh boy, do I wish I could remember that page!) and hadn't had any problem with flash since then.  Until one of the more recent upgrades to Firefox.  I hadn't added or changed any plugins, extensions, etc.  After the new version of Firefox was installed, it just started freezing again on flash, all the time.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

shause2  do you still see this crash when using current version of Firefox and newer flash?

Comment 5

[alex_mayorga]

Please reopen if the problem still exist with current Firefox from http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/