There have been a lot of problems reported with Flash in the past 72 hours. The cause of the extreme problems remains somewhat elusive. Some users had it clear up by itself, others have yet to post an update today (I haven't followed every thread). As a short-run Band-aid, you could minimize Flash issues by setting the plugin to Click-to-Play ("Ask to Activate"). As you probably know, this will delay Flash from starting on a page until you approve it. Of course, once you activate it for a particular site, you may have the same issue. To set "Ask to Activate", open the Add-ons page using either: * Ctrl+Shift+a * "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons * from the Start menu, search box, type or paste the following and press Enter to load it: <code>firefox.exe about:addons</code> In the left column, click Plugins. Look for "Shockwave Flash" and change "Always Activate" to "Ask to Activate". With this setting, when you visit a site that wants to use Flash, you should see a notification icon in the address bar and usually (but not always) 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. The plugin notification icon in the address bar typically looks like a small, dark gray Lego block. When the page wants to use a blocked plugin, the icon turns red to alert you to the concern. If you see a good reason to use Flash, and the site looks trustworthy, you can go ahead and click the notification icon in the address bar to allow Flash. You can trust the site for the time being or permanently. But some pages use Flash only for tracking or playing ads, so if you don't see an immediate need for Flash, feel free to ignore the notification! It will just sit there in case you want to use it later. ---- Meanwhile, we are searching for possible external interactions that could be relevant. Several affected users have Trend Micro security software. If you do, too, you might want to trigger an update in case this was a transient problem with detecting the new Flash plugin as unwanted software.