Firefox 7 is released, I see you are still using version 4. Please use the latest version and see if it still crashes and if it does check out Adobe Flash plugin has crashed - Prevent it from happening again

You might want to actually take some time to read that i have wrote in this forum. Apparently that was not done. You will see that i reverted back to 4.01.

Unfortunately 4.01 is not a supported version to us so if you decide to revert back to 4.01 we will not be providing support for it.

That is a response that i would expect from Google.... Wait, they don't have customer service.

I guess Mozilla could care less about the problems plagued with its browser and all the people complaining of such issues.

If you don't have something useful concerning this issue then i suggest that you don't say anything at all sir. This is suppose to be a forum to help people with issues, but what should i expect from a large company that could care less

Thanks Google

Recent releases of Firefox have had security fixes. Such fixes are not provided for Firefox 4 , 5 and 6. Firefox 3.6 is however still supported so you would do better to consider that.

• see installing previous versions of firefox
  • and download from http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all-older.html

FlashPlayer itself is also something that could introduce security vulnerabilities, you will note many of the Flash Player upgrades relate to security issues, so again it is safer to try to use the most recent version you are able to.

• see for example http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA11-166A.html

Note many posters on this forum are volunteers, and only ordinary users like ourselves. I note that you give crash IDs, but unfortunately I doubt you will get developer assistance when using unsupported FlashPlayer and Firefox versions.

P.S.
Carm if you must use an unsupported version, I thought you may wish to use the official download, I private messaged you the link.

@John99. I appreciate what u offered, I am currently running the latest flash so that has never been an issue to be honest. It is just frustrating that this is happening and i as well as others keep experiencing plugin-container.exe and associated components crashing.

Do you honestly know if anything is being done, or looked at about this, and what that time frame is; maybe point us in the right direction, etc... all i know is to submit my crash reports, but that such a mess to find out who is doing what about what issue, notes, etc...

Thank You Much

As I said Carm I am only another user. If you are using a current release of firefox and a current release of FlashPlayer then any problems are important and should be looked at.

I do not wish to make anything over complicated, but you are obviously concerned about these problems and capable of looking up crash IDs. The developers will look at current issues, but that means using up-to-date versions of Firefox and flash player. That does inevitably mean some users will have a problem that is not addressed but although firefox is open source and free it can not be all things to all people.

If you do get crash reports on current software I hope they will be logged and investigated. You yourself can be an important part in that, someone has to report problems.

Note if you are interested it is possible to run multiple copies/versions of firefox and so investigate problems if it is something you may like to try.

You are not necessarily limited to using just one version of firefox or FlashPlayer, and no fancy coding is required, it can all be done by easy mouse/keyboard options.

I am a support volunteer but unfortunately it is hard to troubleshoot on a browser that is not up to date so I would suggest you get the latest version of firefox and see if it changes because people do want to help but if something is getting in the way we must do something to isolate it - support was provided above to see the article and make sure that you have the latest version of firefox.

Well, as my original posts has always stated i tested this out on the 8b3.

I feel like i am at my job doing technical support for a midsized college and having to keep repeating myself constantly because people do not want to read and comprehend, they want someone to handhold them.

Unfortunately, you need to be able to read, comprehend, and troubleshoot issues to support something.

let me spell this out: Firefox 4.01= flash does not crash plugin-container.exe Firefox 6= Flash causes plugin-container.exe to crash Firefox 7 = Flash causes plugin-container.exe to crash Firefox8b = Flash causes plugin-container.exe to crash

If people cannot comprehend this, i will not respond anymore since it is sad.

I will be DONE with Firefox if the current issue plaguing the plugin-container.exe in the current stable, beta and aurora do not have a resolution by the time a stable 8 comes out. Meanwhile i will be using version 4.01 which actually has a STABLE plugin-container.exe

Now i see why Chrome is becoming the preferred browser, and is overtaking Firefox

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201104-201109

Hi again Carm,

Do you honestly know if anything is being done, or looked at about this, and what that time frame is; maybe point us in the right direction, etc

See if you can follow my reasoning, it may even help you in your chosen course of action of using an older firefox version

My thoughts on these subjects - a bit of lateral thinking - being:

 "Firefox 7 = Flash causes plugin-container.exe to crash Firefox8b = Flash causes plugin-container.exe to crash"

• you may find it worth trying to look into the reasons behind that as my understandings are
  • there will be many millions thinking otherwise
    Firefox has a userbase of around 400 million, a large proportion , use Windows, Firefox7, and FlashPlayer
    hard facts tend to suggest that most users do not crash
    that is not denying Flash Player and firefox have problems, probably in fact a major consideration in the introduction of plugin container, so such crashes no longer crash the browser itself

"This is quite frustrating. Ever since the release of FF6 the performance of Firefox with Flash related content literally sucks! "

• so instead of using firefox 4 why not consider firefox 3.6
  • or run 3.6.23 as well as 4 (you could run 4 normally and 3.6 when troubleshooting)
  • firefox 3.6.23 is still supported so it gets security and stability fixes, I imagine that must include any fix necessary to stop Flash Player crashes
    the reason Firefox 3.6 is being supported, instead of EOL like firefox 4 5 & 6 is that Mozilla Firefox have realised the problems the fast release cycle is causing
  • you were getting crash IDs from plugin container reports, you could submit such if they were generated by firefox 3.6 and ask for them to be investigated re firefox 3.6, they would also generate reports and statistics that would be valid for investigation by developers

Get rid of plugin container

"I thought that i could re-install Firefox 7 and simply replace the plugin-container.exe from 4.01, however that did not work. It resulted in a complete lock up of Firefox 7.01, and was honestly hoping that it would be that straight forward. "

• you could do that by using a version before firefox 3.6.4 (the point releases back then were more like the release versions now)
• better and simpler disable plugin container
  • that is easily done you change some preferences
    • see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins#Disabling_crash_protection
• that has of course the disadvantage of meaning firefox itself is more likely to crash, but the advantage of submitting crash reports for a full crash which you may be seeing on a supported version of firefox

Closing thoughts, you may also need to consider other causes of recent versions of Firefox crashing or hanging, maybe some of these compound problems with Flash Player on Firefox

• some have had regressions affecting memory usage, improvement have been and continue to be made (although a big problem seems to have been found in a recent nightly - you may find some parts of the blogs of one of the developers N N J Nethercote interesting to read )
• firefox does not currently report hangs only crashes, something being remedied as a matter of urgency after Windows hangs were discovered to be widely occurring since Firefox 6 without getting developer attention (e.g. bug Bug 429592 - catch process hangs & this} bug686025)
• note if you cause cookies/history to be cleared, a known bug generated multiple instances of plugin container even for disabled plugins (bug633427 ).

Hope I at least gave you something to think about whilst fighting with Firefox & FlashPlayer. :-)

The Adobe plugin crashed again about half an hour ago. It crashed on me 4 times from the weekend to tonight, so after checking it was OK on my plugins page, I uninstalled it and Firefox 7 then reinstalled both via Explorer. I also tried a couple of sites that use Flash Player on Explorer and had no issues, though I might just have been lucky. Since reinstalling tonight it has crashed again.

I'd much rather use open-source Firefox than either of its corporate rivals but as 80% of what I do on the web involves Flash, I'm getting as frustrated as Carm.

using XP and Firefox 7

Hi Adeh999,

Sorry you are having problems. Another 59 votes say you are not alone in having such problems. Probably the majority of internet connected PC computers now have FlashPlayer installed so it has to be very important to firefox users that it works!

Clearly Firefox should work with FlashPlayer, and that should not produce user problems on the majority of sites. I am lucky FlashPlayer does not crash Firefox on my XP s. I suggest you start a new thread so that we can address YOUR own personal problem we

• may find a problem on your system,
  - which I hope can be fixed
• it could be a firefox problem,
  - if that is the case we can get developer attention, and it will be fixed
  (Flash Player is important as explained above, and the developers realise that).
• sometimes the problem maybe out of our hands e.g.
  - a Windows / AV problem,
  - a problem with other third party software, or with a particular Flash Player version.

If you do start another thread please post a link to it in this thread. (Or at least mention you have posted a question - I will find the thread)

• see also plugin crash reports and the adobe Flash plugin has crashed

I have found the bug thread, and have posted several posts with information and some examples of sites that provide positive crashes.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=561019

From reading the posts, it looks as if Mozilla has moved this up a bit in priority according to reading into a post from one of the mozilla's team members since I have provided information concerning the crashes.

That particular bug ( Bug 561019 - Plugin waveOutOpen hangs ) is the TOP crasher of plugins:

https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/topcrasher/byversion/Firefox/7.0.1/7/plugin

As far as reporting bug/hangs. The end user has to press the " submit crash report " link to submit it. If they do not it will sit there until you go into about:crashes

For hangs that DO NOT produce a crash you once again have to go into about:crashes and click on all the reports that DO NOT have a " bp " in front of them to get them to actually submit. They will post in about 3 minutes.

So for the "400 million" said users and " hard facts tend to suggest that most users do not crash " is unreliable to state since it is TOTALLY up to the end user to submit the report providing they know how. I know from working in a professional environment 99.9% of users do not submit error reports of any kind when something crashes the OS or any program. Even with the 9 members of my team they always click "do not send" except for myself.

" Get rid of plugin container " is a non option since you run the risk of features not working as i have found when you do that.

It does seem like a Firefox issue for several reasons: latest version of flash with Firefox v4.01 works flawlessly, and Chrome and IE do not have this issue with flash.

removed

All I want is a fix so I can use the ---- flash again without having to uninstall it after every use. Then re-install if I need it again. Absolutely insane!!! Not a problem on IE.

Thanks carm,

A few more general comments.

 " As far as reporting bug/hangs. The end user has to press the " submit crash report " link to submit it. If they do not it will sit there until you go into about:crashes  " 

Not sure the reasoning behind the not submitting automatically. I am guessing it is due to the very large number of crashes that occur but are for website, PC, or internet related problems rather than being a Firefox problem that could otherwise overwhelm the reporter. As you say the one you have picked up is a top crasher and being investigated (Bug 561019 - Plugin waveOutOpen hangs ). If only 1 in 4 use Flash Player at least once each month and of those only 0.1% submit crashes that is still a potential 100k reports a month.

As for hangs and freezes, again something the developers have woken up to as needing automated reporting, as I mentioned in a post above. (Bug 429592 - catch process hangs)

By contrast the system crashes do normally try to submit automatically, but only a proportion, possibly 10% on Release Versions, are automatically analysed. Interrogating the crash ID on the site evokes processing, the unprocessed report being prioritised and is usually processed and made available within a few seconds or minutes.

I suppose the bug you refer to is receiving attention as it is a top crasher, and is crashing the 7 Release and the 8 beta. There do not yet seem to be reliable Steps To Reproduce in the bug. The fact you have no problems with 4.01 does suggest a firefox regression, but that is not easy to pinpoint until someone works out STR. (I had problems with mozregression recently, I do not think that tool works correctly at the moment, possibly due to location changes)

Did you ever try with Firefox 3.6.23 ?
That may conceivably help narrow the regression range window, because the 3.6 series is supported and updated so will have had patches that were not applied to 4.01 ; Firefox 3.6 working would possibly point to one of the recent patches causing the regression, and would be a safer workaround.

Another factor is what if anything else is involved
e.g. specific other audio drivers, software or devices. (I am lucky Flash Player is not crashing). I am sure your comments in the bug are appreciated, and as you realise some of these problems do require input from those seeing the problem in order that it may stand a chance of being investigated. Also it is noted the bug in question is looking at multiple aggregated signatures, there could be more than one cause behind some of this.

Thanks again for making the effort to post constructive comments.

Thanks John99

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/892132#answer-269005

I just upgraded from FF7 to FF8. All FF version worked fine until 8. Websites that use flash cause the browser to freeze. System: Puppy Linux. Flash: Versions 11.1 11.0, and 10.3 When I disable the 3 flash versions in the Add-Ons section, the browser works fine.

If you are saying Firefox 8 has problems with Flash Player on Linux I suggest you start a new thread.