As a short-term workaround to bypass this issue on sites where video isn't critical, you could stop sites from using Flash automatically and require them to get your approval.

To set "Ask to Activate", open the Add-ons page using either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Plugins. Look for "Shockwave Flash" and change "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate".

When you visit a site that wants to use the Flash plugin, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and one of the following: a link in a black rectangle in the page or an infobar sliding down between the toolbar area and the page.

Do you use the VLC plugin frequently? If not, could you set it to "Never Activate" and test that way for 24 hours to see whether you notice much difference?

Troubleshoot Shockwave Player installation | Windows Troubleshoot installation | Shockwave Player | Mac OS

dearmschris said

I'm running Windows 8 and using mozilla as my browser. Lately, it's taking a while for a page to load. I'll end up getting this message "Shockwave flash may be busy or it may have stopped responding' and I'm prompted to either continue or to quit shockwave. It's happening on a variety of web pages I'm trying to visit. I'd love your help to solve this problem!

I had the same problem. I found that if you go to the link below and scroll down to is shockwave working. Then click onto the first blue sentence-link to see if you have it installed or not. If not, click onto the button for downloading Shockwave. Once completed, go into Firefoxes ADD-ONS. Look up shockwave DIRECTOR and enable it. For good measure, I went into CONTROL PANEL on my 'puter. Then into add programs. Then to shockwave BUT I clicked onto PROPERTIES and made sure that it was UNBLOCKED and certificate installed. No problems to date to report.https://helpx.adobe.com/shockwave/kb/shockwave-player-faq.html#main_Troubleshooting