Flash freezes on 11 second intervals, doesn't crash or hang Firefox.
HW: A quite old Fujitsu Siemens Amilo laptop (Pentium 4 2.60GHz), ATI Mobility Radeon 9600, that sorta thing
SW: Microsoft Windows XP, SP3 (on complete autoupdate), Firefox 15, on beta update channel, Flash 11.3 r300 (on "please notify" update), ATI driver 6.14.10.6375 (updated ... well, a long time ago), Antivir, firewall adequate and running, I guess that's about everything I can imagine pertinent
As said, Flash freezes on 11 second intervals, doesn't crash or hang Firefox though. Once I click on the video slider it plays another 11 seconds ... not really practical for watching 30 or 60 minute long programs, tutorials or such.
I've just endured this for a while (through several updates of both FF and Flash), but the problem remains exactly the same. It's a bit odd and doesn't seem exactly like any other FF problem reported here.
As it's easy to make the problem worse by "just trying things out", I'd like to attempt the lowest risk (and if possible, effort) fix and proceed with extreme caution. I'm working with "senior" equipment here (in computer years), after all.
Thanks for your attention.
All Replies (7)
Flash pauses and doesn't restart? In other words, it's not just buffering, but behaves as though you hit the pause button?
It is possible that there is a problem with the files sessionstore.js and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.
Delete the sessionstore.js file and possible sessionstore-##.js files with a number and sessionstore.bak in the Firefox Profile Folder.
- Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Open Containing Folder
- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox
Deleting sessionstore.js will cause App Tabs and Tab Groups and open and closed (undo) tabs to get lost, so you will have to create them again (make a note or bookmark them).
@jscher2000:
No, no buffering. Sorry, should have specified that also. The buffer bar is way ahead of the slider usually ("adequate" connection), and the file is loaded OK - just doesn't display other than in 11 sec increments. I don't think the pause/play button changes accordingly as the video freezes though - it just indicates the file should be playing.
@cor-el:
I located the sessionstore files, there seem to be 3 of the sessionstore-*.js kind which indicates some kind of a problem already. Don't know if the file modification dates correlate with the emergence of the problem. I don't use App Tabs or Tab Groups generally and wouldn't have any "regular" tabs open either while tinkering with any sort of program files, so that is not going to be a problem (I think). As long as my bookmarks survive ... So, before I go through with this, just to clarify, the sessionstore-*.js file items are not just recording the state and use of FF but have actual "active" functions during the normal operation of the browser?
The sessionstore-#.js with a number are temp files created by Firefox.
Such temp files should only be there during the creation of the file.
Firefox should rename the temp file to sessionstore.js once the temp file has been written to disk successfully.
If the temp file with the number is still there then Firefox wasn't able to finish the latter.
Such issues can be caused by security software that is checking the sessionstore file in the Firefox Profile Folder.
It is best to remove all the sessionstore files or at least the ones with a number and check that numbered files aren't created.
You can also check the settings in your anti-virus software and exclude the Firefox Profile Folder.
@cor-el:
Sessionstore files deleted (a couple of times, actually), but unfortunately to no avail. My antivir allows exclusions from manual/timed scans only. Thank you for your efforts anyway: It may just be that my "combo" of things is inevitably becoming obsolete as commercial software developers would prefer us all adopting the more recent iterations of the tech curve (... and spending on it accordingly).
A further observation: As Flash videos freeze on 11 sec intervals (e.g. YouTube), Brightcove videos freeze on 7 sec intervals (e.g. New Scientist uses Brightcove). I'm not very familiar with different (streaming online) media file standards, are there others I could try out?