Hmm, that's annoying. Is this where you are intentionally using a plugin, such as Flash or Silverlight, to play media, or is this happening more randomly?

I suggest the following to minimize potential issues with Flash during your troubleshooting:

(1) To avoid unnecessary pain on sites where Flash is not actually essential, try setting Flash to Click-to-Play ("Ask to Activate"). This will delay Flash from starting on a page until you approve it.

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".

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 dark gray 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. (If it's red, Flash needs updating.)

The delay in activating Flash can help distinguish between problems caused on initial page load, styling, and script activation vs. loading/running Flash.

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.

(2) A common cause of unresponsive script errors and other problems on Windows Vista and higher is the protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin. That feature has security benefits, but seems to have serious compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it using the Add-ons page. Either:

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

In the left column, click Plugins. On the right side, find "Shockwave Flash" and click the More link. Then uncheck the box for "Enable Adobe Flash protected mode" and try that for a day to see whether it helps.

jscher2000 said

Hmm, that's annoying. Is this where you are intentionally using a plugin, such as Flash or Silverlight, to play media, or is this happening more randomly? I suggest the following to minimize potential issues with Flash during your troubleshooting: (1) To avoid unnecessary pain on sites where Flash is not actually essential, try setting Flash to Click-to-Play ("Ask to Activate"). This will delay Flash from starting on a page until you approve it. 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". 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 dark gray 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. (If it's red, Flash needs updating.) The delay in activating Flash can help distinguish between problems caused on initial page load, styling, and script activation vs. loading/running Flash. 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. (2) A common cause of unresponsive script errors and other problems on Windows Vista and higher is the protected mode feature of the Flash player plugin. That feature has security benefits, but seems to have serious compatibility issues on some systems. You can disable it using the Add-ons page. Either:

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

In the left column, click Plugins. On the right side, find "Shockwave Flash" and click the More link. Then uncheck the box for "Enable Adobe Flash protected mode" and try that for a day to see whether it helps.

I should have included a screenshot of the error message in the original help request, i have attached it to this reply....btw, much thanks for the extremely fast reply jscher

I cannot verify that the plugin is a flash plugin...but I am not educated enough to know what other plugin it could be (not silverlight?)

I am in process of setting flash to "manual launch only"....but being a crazy day at work, im moving slowly

I will report back as soon as i have more info to work with

, again, many many thanks

,bob

edit: I meant to include on small detail....it crashes/hangs at random. I have never looked at the google page script to see what all it wants to run, but with google as my homepage the plugin crashes upon launching firefox (sometimes), in the case of the previously attached screenshot I was at cnet(?)

The screenshot doesn't show a Lego block icon at the left end of the location/address bar, so it isn't conclusive that this would be about Flash.

You can check for issues caused by plugins and set plugins to "Ask to Activate" on the "3-bar Menu button/Tools > Add-ons > Plugins" page.

• plugins are not affected by Firefox Safe Mode