Latest Version of Adobe Flash Player

I had the same problem recently with FF (flash crashing). I did some research after it attempted to launch itself twice. Here's what I found, this bug has been made aware to the Adobe team & the article has debugging advice.

Whenever a flash app is used on a website two instances show up in processes and SOMETIMES stay there even when firefox is closed.

Starting with Flash Player 11.3, a protected mode was added as a new security enhancement for Firefox 4.0 and greater on Windows Vista and higher. This security enhancement is designed to limit the impact of attacks launched from malicious Flash content (SWF files).

For more information on this feature, please see this article: Inside Flash Player Protected Mode for Firefox

While we believe this feature is fully tested and reliable, if you encounter issues with Firefox you can temporarily disable this feature for troubleshooting purposes. We strongly recommend that Protected Mode is enabled once troubleshooting is complete.

Adobe Forums: How do I disable Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

I see somebody has beaten me to this. I originally thought there had been a problem with the video clips at:

Console vidéo de la LNH - Canadiens de Montréal

I do occasionally encounter transient problems on this site where certain pages will refuse to load for a few days & then they get it straightened out. Then I noticed I wasn't seeing Flash videos at another site. So I completely uninstalled Flash, including the version for IE, which I almost never use, preferring Firefox. Then I reinstalled Flash for FFox. No go. Tried it a couple of times, in case I was seeing a transient problem. Still no go. So I went into IE 64-bit & installed Flash from there. Presto. No problem. So I came to the Forums here & stumbled across a mention in some thread I probably couldn't find again of an Adobe Flash uninstaller program. There was a link to it in that thread but I think you can just search Adobe's site to find it. Oh. Wait. I just looked at page 1 of this thread & I see Brink has a link to it up at the top. Typical. Should have known he'd be that thorough. So. Back to my saga. Uninstalled Flash with their uninstaller (instead of just from Control Panel as I had been doing, which I can't tell there's any difference) & reinstalled again a few times, with no success. Then I hunted around at Adobe & found one page of advice about using the Flash Settings Manager to delete all their files. Another step there said to delete a certain structure of Flash-related directories under %APPDATA%. I deleted the files using their settings thing, uninstalled, then cleared out the directory structure they talked about. I'm not going to post what that was because I believe it was a wasted step. The particular structure was empty when I looked at it, no doubt because I had both deleted the files from their Settings thing and then uninstalled Flash.

So after yet another install & still seeing nothing, I hunted more vigorously at Adobe & came across the link

Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

that Borg posted a few days ago. I find it annoying that (a) Adobe didn't have anything in their automatic update process to warn people about this new Protected Mode, & (b) they put the advice about disabling Protected Mode at the very bottom of their list of evasive actions to take, behind a load of useless steps like disabling all your other plug-ins one at a time, running FFox in protected mode, and disabling the conflicting Real Player thing which the Mozilla folks pushed out as an automatic FFox update a few days ago. Those steps will do nothing but annoy & upset you when their alleged "last resort" step is the one that cures the problem.

One thing they don't say in their instructions is that you have to edit their configuration file via an elevated Notepad (Run as Administrator). They talk about placing the file in an updatable place & then copying it. How gauche.

Something I find a bit odd about this is Adobe's automatic detection of your system & automatic selection of the Flash to download. Their site did correctly say I was running a 64-bit version of Windows but as far as I can tell, they gave me a 32-bit version of Flash. It works, so I'm not complaining. But I did notice something on their web site that bragged how their Flash was 64-bit. Maybe only in IE. I don't know.

Anyway, I just wanted to confirm that the instructions on the Adobe site for disabling Protected Mode do solve the problem & I would thank Borg except I found his post after I had essentially duplicated his work before I knew he had done that work. I guess that'll learn me!

I've skimmed a few more posts in this thread & I gather the bitness of both Flash & FFox remains 32. Other than being able to address ridiculously gigantic gobs of storage with 64 bits, as opposed to merely slightly obscene amounts of storage with "only" 32 bits, what's the advantage to 64-bit Fliash? And 64-bit FFox for that matter? Everything I've tried to watch plays fine. How would it be better with double the bits in the browser alone, Flash alone, and both together?

x64 Flash is for x64 browsers. On a x64 system, an x64 browser would run natively. Beyond that, I have never seen any particularly useful difference then using a x86 browser. A Guy

Adobe has yet to issue a fix for its Flash plugin — more than a week after it was first released — after users complained that the software continually crashed in the latest Firefox browser.

Adobe’s latest Flash version — also released on June 8 — appears to be incompatible with the browser when running on Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines. At least on the bright side, when Flash crashes the browser doesn’t crumble, so the chance of a data loss in non-Flash applications is minimal.

Naturally many are frustrated, but it’s likely many won’t mind the fact that Flash-based ads won’t load.

Firefox users still waiting for Flash crash fix | ZDNet

The obvious fix for YouTube users is to switch on HTML5, which will allow YouTube videos to load without the need for Flash. For the rest of the Web, however, you’re pretty much on your own until Adobe releases a fix.

June 20, 2012
Flash player 11.3.300.262 released.

Adobe - Install Adobe Flash Player

Airbot said:

June 20, 2012
Flash player 11.3.300.262 released.

Adobe - Install Adobe Flash Player

Looks like it is for FF only. Must be a fix for that latest problem.



Jim

Phone Man said:

Airbot said:

June 20, 2012
Flash player 11.3.300.262 released.

Adobe - Install Adobe Flash Player

Looks like it is for FF only. Must be a fix for that latest problem.



Jim

I'm sure it was about the FF problem. But it did update my Opera

A Guy

A Guy said:

Phone Man said:

Airbot said:

June 20, 2012
Flash player 11.3.300.262 released.

Adobe - Install Adobe Flash Player

Looks like it is for FF only. Must be a fix for that latest problem.



Jim

I'm sure it was about the FF problem. But it did update my Opera

A Guy

Opera is in the same group as FF as far as Flash is concerned. And I did find out this was a fix for the FF problem.

Jim

It still requires that you have the line that reads:

ProtectedMode=0

in the file mms.cfg in directory %windir%\SysWOW64\Macromed\Flash for 64-bit W7 (%windir%\system32\macromed\flash for 32-bit W7). You must use an elevated Notepad (Run as Administrator) to update the file. I originally found this advice on page

Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

That page still contains the same advice as of moments ago.