How to stop Flash crashing in Chrome: Google Chrome is killing off Flash
If your Flash plug-in is crashing in Google Chrome, here are some tips to solve the problem. For now... since Google is ending support for Flash in Chrome.
By Paul Monckton | 12 Dec 16
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How to stop Shockwave Flash crashing in Google Chrome
How to stop Shockwave Flash crashing in Google Chrome
As far as Adobe is concerned the bug that causes Shockwave Flash to crash in Chrome has been fixed. If you are still experiencing problems, ensure you are running the latest version of the browser. If you are running an older version of Chrome in this article we show you some tips that may help you to stop Flash crashing in Chrome.
However, note that Google is ending support for Flash in Chrome. It began this chore back in September 2016 with Chrome 53, and by February 2017 when Chrome 56 rolls out by default Flash will be disabled for all users. You'll need to manually enable Flash if you wish to use it.
For those who do wish to use Flash the need to enable it every time will be a nuisance, but that is Google's plan as it encourages the use of HTML5 over Flash. Not only is Flash notorious for its security vulnerabilities, but it is today used primarily behind the scenes for things like analytics that serve only to slow down users.
According to Google, "HTML5 is much lighter and faster, and publishers are switching over to speed up page loading and save you more battery life. You’ll see an improvement in responsiveness and efficiency for many sites."
Flash has never been supported by iOS, and was removed from Android some years ago. Going forward sites will be encouraged to use HTML5 over Flash.
How to stop Shockwave Flash crashing in Google Chrome: Step-by-step guide
If you use Google Chrome you may have become used to the Shockwave Flash plugin crashing. Here, we offer some advice on how to fix the problem.
Google Chrome, unlike other browsers, has its own version of Adobe Flash Player built in. When you update Chrome, it also updates the version of Flash.
Update: Previously, the solution was to disable any extra Flash plugins, but as has been pointed out in the comments below, the latest version of Chrome shows only one Flash plugin. According to Adobe, there was a known bug in older versions of Chrome which "significantly impacted Flash performance". This has been fixed - as far as Adobe is concerned - in the current build of Chrome.
What this means is that, if you're still experiencing bad Flash performance or the plugin crashing, you should check if you are indeed running the latest version of Chrome. If an update is available you should install it. To check, click on the three horizontal bars near the top-right corner and click Help and about.
A new tab will open and Chrome will check for updates and begin downloading one if relevant. Once this is done, you will see a Relaunch Chrome buttton, which you need to click to complete the update.
How to stop Flash crashing in Chrome
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If you still have problems after that, the cause is most likely out-of-date drivers, so first check you have the latest graphics card drivers installed. It can also be caused by what Adobe refers to as "inefficient content", so the poor performance or crashing could be caused by the flash content itself. If that's the case, there's nothing you can do to fix it - it's down to the content provider.
Here follows the rest of our original article which may help anyone running an old version of Chrome:
To check Google Chrome's configuration, type about:plugins into the address bar and press Enter. This will bring up a page of information about all the plug-ins currently configured within Google Chrome.
Look for any entries in the list such as Adobe Flash Player, or Shockwave Flash. If you can see two or more, you have more than one Flash plug-in installed.
At the top right of the plug-ins page you'll see ‘Details'. Click this link to reveal more information about each extension.
The filename of each plug-in will be listed next to Location. Look at this information, and you'll see that one is stored under [Your User Folder]AppData\Local\Google\Chrome. This is Chrome's integrated plug-in. The other will begin with ‘C:\Windows\..' . The path names vary depending on your version of Windows. If you're using Windows 8, for example the path for the integrated plug-in is something like C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\36.0.1985.125\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll (the version number may be different).
If both these files offer a Disable link, both are active and likely to be the cause of your browser crashes.
How to fix Shockwave Flash crashing in Google Chrome
You can now choose which player you want to retain, by clicking Disable on the other one. Chrome will now use whichever version is enabled on your PC.
If you decide to use the installable plug-in rather than the integrated one, it's advisable to make sure you have the latest version installed. Click here to get the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
If the crashing behaviour continues, try going back to about:plugins and selecting to use the other Flash player.
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Tags: Internet, Software
