When Firefox crashes, it usually records information about what was happening at that moment. You can submit that data to Mozilla and share it with forum volunteers to see whether it points to the solution. Please check the support article "Firefox Crashes" (especially the last section) for steps to get those crash IDs, and then post some of the recent ones here.

If Firefox is not stable enough to use the about:crashes page, you could try starting it in Firefox's Safe Mode. That's a standard diagnostic tool to bypass interference by extensions (and some custom settings). This article has the steps: Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode.

Thanks for the reply, jscher2000.

Here are a couple of the IDs, there has been about 15 since yesterday evening.

bp-a97b3d71-f474-4a88-995c-24b192140303 bp-5174362c-f3f3-4da7-856a-403332140303 F000DEE9-0AC2-470D-807A-3941134CDFB7

I did run it in safe mode, it's still hanging but not as bad. It's slow but useable until until I try to use Flash, then it locks up completely.

On those links, it had some trouble-shooting advice, but I did all that last night and it's still crashing every time I try to use Flash.

The thing is, as I said, I'm a media studies student - half of the shows I write about are online. I HAVE to get this sorted, I need Flash to work because some of the shows are older/American and I don't really have access to them without the internet, so I have to get this fixed!

Let me know if I did this right, and if you need more information! Thanks again.

Also, I thought maybe it was due to a recent upgrade, since this problem only became unbearable in the last few days, so when I reinstalled both FF and Flash, I used archived versions. Nope, still doing it.

Update: sometimes resetting Firefox helps very much for about a half an hour, no crashing for a lovely little while, then the problem resets and starts again. However, just tried to reset it again and it is crashing. So not a consistent help, but one that occasionally does clear it temporarily.

Hi Maddyjames, when you get the repeated crashes, is Firefox trying to reload a tab it had open before? Just wondering whether there is some particular media that is particularly troublesome.

The two linked crash reports refer to "FlashPlayerDebugger-10.6" which I think is related to using a debugger version from this page: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashpla.../downloads.html#fp11.7. I'm not sure what to suggest about those errors.

If you scroll down to errors from when you had the Flash 12 release, maybe those will be more illuminating??

More generally, sometimes incompatibility with your graphics card drivers can be a factor. You can disable hardware acceleration in Firefox and in Flash as a workaround:

(A) In Firefox, un-check the box here and restart:

Firefox menu > Preferences > Advanced > General > "Use hardware acceleration when available"

(B) In Flash, see this support article from Adobe: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/video-playback-issues.html#main_Solve_video_playback_issues

Hi Jscher2000, thanks once again for replying.

When I said I was not a techy, I mean I basically know as much as your average 75 year old grandfather. So please bear with me if I'm quite stupid.

Question 1 - RE Repeated crashes - all videos are troublesome. This started yesterday ish - morning/midmorning/ish - was watching a video on a site that I watch all the time, boom, pinwheel of death. From that point on, any site - Youtube, news, anything with video would crash and give me the pinwheel of death.

I had Activity Moniter up when I clicked on a page to see what would lock the worst, and I could literally watch the shockwave eating up all the ram. I don't have much on my computer, I keep most of my important documents in an external hard drive (too many PCs self-imploding with lost novels in them!) so there's not much bogging down the system. I'm not a gamer, I'd have to understand how to even use them! So I'm pretty sure it's the Shockwave player because that is what locks up everything first. As long as I don't go to pages where teh flash is directly used, it seems to be moderately okay (but taking up more space than it really should)

The two linked crash reports refer to "FlashPlayerDebugger-10.6" which I think is related to using a debugger version from this page: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashpla.../downloads.html#fp11.7. I'm not sure what to suggest about those errors.

If you scroll down to errors from when you had the Flash 12 release, maybe those will be more illuminating??

I'm so sorry, I don't actually know what any of this means... Talk to me like I'm four because I think you lost me there.

Lastly, A) I've seen this suggestion on other sites, but no-one had suggestions for Mac! SO THANKS FOR THAT it's been driving me insane. I did what you suggested and there was no change, but Firefox is, I think, on the verge of shutting down yet again (despite no adobe use) so I shall maybe restart the computer and see if that helps.

B) I went to this site but didn't understand what any of it said, it's all in technobabble and my brain is sort of allergic to technological explanations of things.

I'm so sorry, I know I'm being a bit useless. Today I tried, once again, to delete and uninstall completely Flash and downgrade to the one before, but that didn't seem to make a difference. Yesterday I did the same to Firefox, but there was no change. I reset it a couple times today, a few times it reset it for about a half hour and worked, that was nice, and then t stopped doing that and kept locking up again.

Would more crash reports help? I have several of them....

You're being very kind to help me, I really am grateful for your time. Let me know if you need more information for this. I really do need this sorted - I've spent all day online looking at similar questions and none of them have helped. But I'm a media studies student - I need to be able to access television and film for my work!

Thanks again, I do appreciate it. Let me know what other information you need, can post more crash reports if it will help you. Will reboot and maybe that hardware acceleration thing will do it!

Thanks!

On the "scrolling down" part I mean on the about:crashes page, to find older reports before you changed from the current Adobe release (Shockwave Flash 12) to the older release (Shockwave Flash 11.7). This isn't visible from just looking at the crash IDs, but you may recall the approximate time when you switched.

To disable the use of hardware acceleration by the Flash plugin, right-click some media and choose Settings from the context menu. Then click the icon that looks like a monitor at the lower left of the settings dialog to access the Display settings, and uncheck that box. (Screen shot sequence attached; large file.)

Can you think of any other changes that occurred on your computer yesterday?

Hi there, thanks once again for the reply. I did the hardware acceleration and some of the webpages are working again - BBC news clips are back on, the youtube videos seem to be working. One site in particular is problematic, however, trying to watch videos here for my work, http://www.startrek.com/watch_episode/scGrweK9EDP7 was one I was watching and it shut down and hasn't worked since. It hasn't worked since yesterday.

Here are the error codes for the evening -

bp-757e6e3d-92e0-4edd-8ad4-4b3912140303	

bp-46b33e54-b2c3-4044-9e23-f13602140303 bp-cae0f527-b265-4014-a881-f8a812140303 bp-040ada7a-69ba-46f4-99d3-d91c62140303 bp-9c7f2e34-8a58-4f76-9356-34e9d2140303 bp-b42c2f24-f832-4888-9be2-091e42140303

I didn't switch on purpose, I assume it was an automatic update? I think it was in the mid-morning, I was in the middle of one of these episodes when it all started, actually. I knew it wasn't just this website going down or anything because after that that's when youtube and BBC news sites etc all went down.

So many things have started working since I unticked that box, so that did help, just some of these other websites like the one above is still a bit sticky!

If it was a Firefox update, that would be listed in your update history. You can view that on the Troubleshooting Information page. Either:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information
• type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table of information, you should see a button labeled "Show Update History" that says when you installed Firefox 27.0.1 (assuming that was the last install).

Those new crash reports have the same mysterious "FlashPlayerDebugger-10.6" line repeated over and over. I haven't seen it with any other Flash hangs and don't know how to tackle it. Hopefully someone else will have an idea on those.

A particular friend of mine would love to have a job where it is necessary to watch old Star Trek episodes...

Do you get the player loading to a black rectangle, then the pre-roll advert? How much of the video plays?

There's no update information because I had deleted Firefox completely and reinstalled :(

FlashPlayerDebugger-10.6 - No idea, I googled it just now and it does have hits for crashes, not just on FF but Safari and others, but none of that looked particularly helpful. Hopefully someone else would catch up on that one, yeah?

I'm not even particularly keen on Star Trek, I'm writing an article on it and it was necessary to watch. This site was particularly useful because it had subtitles, I'm Hard of Hearing so subtitles are awesome!

Black rectangle for several minutes with pinwheel of death, followed by Grey striped rectangle, sad lego face, 'Adobe plug in has crashed' and a suggestion to reload. No advert because I have Edge on, I thought maybe it was Edge so when I reinstalled it I tried several of the sites before reinstalling Edge and, alas, it did it anyway. :( So, none of the video plays.

Thanks again for trying to help, this is apparently quite a stubborn little flaw - can't sort out what happened, it was completely fine, then all the sudden, boom.

If it helps anyone figure this out, BBC iplayer will not play, but youtube will (most of the time) since unclicking the acceleration tab.