How to prevent flash crashes in Firefox

Posted Thu, 02/12/2010 - 15:39 by vladislavm
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From version 3.6.4 Firefox started to use plugin-container.exe as external container over browser plugins in general and flash player specifically

 

This to prevent browser crashes in case of plugin crash. The idea is nice, the implementation caused to common plugins instability.

 

In cases when plugin is "hard-working" (and Flash is good candidate), the communication between browser and plugin-container can be lost. In that cases FF counts till 45 and kills the plugin, sometimes it causes to FF freeze also.

 

There are 2 workarounds - return to version 3.6.3 or disable "plugin-container" feature in FF about:config (search for "ipc" string):

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled = true

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll = false

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npqtplugin.dll = false

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npswf32.dll = false

dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.nptest.dll = false

 

*It's better to disable FF updates also, till Mozilla will fix it

Comments

by sefi - 02/12/2010 - 16:01

 That's a good catch, and a "nice to know" kinda thing.

by yossis - 02/12/2010 - 16:13

alternative way is to set the  dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs = -1

by vladislavm - 02/12/2010 - 16:36

I tried it, this causes to browser to freeze forever with flash plugin