"The WidevineCdm plugin has crashed" - unable to use any streaming service.
Whenever I attempt to watch something on any streaming service, I get an error message from the streaming service and a note from Firefox saying "The WidevineCdm plugin has crashed." I have tried to solve this problem a number of ways, but have unable to find a solution.
My best guess is the problem is due to the most recent WidevineCdm update, as in the plugins settings the most recent update for the plugin was on 10/21/23, which is shortly before I first noticed the problem. I did test out various streaming platforms on other computer browsers (Chrome and Microsoft Edge) — they gave the same website errors as I got on Firefox, but those browsers did not indicate the cause or suggest which plugin failed. I additionally tested out desktop apps for some of the streaming platforms; they work fine without any issues, but unfortunately the main streaming platform I use doesn't have a desktop app and only works in browser.
My computer is a Lenovo Yoga 9i, it's running Windows 11, and everything is up-to-date.
The methods I have tried to fix this issue with, to no avail: - submitted crash reports - toggling the "play DRM restricted content" options in Firefox, and toggling whether or not the WidevineCdm was activated, closing the browser between each toggle of options - clearing Firefox's cache - running Firefox in troubleshooting mode to make sure it wasn't a different extension interfering with it - tried running Firefox in compatibility mode - tried to find support from the people who made WidevineCdm, but apparently they don't do end-user support - deleting the WidevineCdm manually from the program files for Firefox and Chrome (since Firefox says the plugin is from Google), and then reinstalling it via the chrome components page. This briefly lead to the message on the plugin page that WidevinceCdm would "begin installing shortly." It seemed frozen like that for a good while, but then I tried clicking the "check for updates" and that message disappeared, and it went back to crashing when I tried using a streaming service. - uninstalling both Chrome and Firefox, restarting the computer, then reinstalling both browsers
As far as I can tell, the plugin comes automatically installed in the browser, and there isn't an alternate plugin for decrypting DRM-restricted content. If there's a way to set the WidevineCdm to a previous version before the update that's crashing it, I haven't found it, but I am no expert in computers or coding, and my guess about it being caused by the recent update could be wrong too.
I'm at my wit's end here, any help fixing this problem is greatly appreciated.
Chosen solution
I can't believe this — I finally found out what was causing the problem!
I was looking through the task manager, and noticed that Cisco AMP for Endpoints Connector was active. I'd had to install it in college to access university wifi, but never went through uninstalling it, and honestly, I'd forgotten about it and assumed it was turned off, considering it's been a few years since graduation. Since it's a security software and that was suggested earlier as a potential barrier to getting widevinecdm to work, I uninstalled it and restarted the computer.
It didn't immediately fix the problem, however, after uninstalling it I went back to about:support and clicked the refresh Firefox option, to try and trigger a reinstall of Widevine. And it worked!
I'm slowly adding back the plugins I had installed earlier, just to be sure it continues to work, and so far everything is good. I even tested the other browsers, the streaming services will play on them too now.
I feel a little silly, that the solution ended up being so easy in the end. Thank you everyone for your help.
Read this answer in context 👍 4All Replies (15)
Visit about:third-party in the address bar to identify software injecting third-party modules and try uninstalling them. Don't have any debuggers or cheat software running in the background. Disable any security software.
See if it works in Windows Safe Mode.
(edited) just read your attempted fixes included this sorry for rubbing salt if not resolved yet
I had this problem and found a solution that worked for me. I am windows 64 bit standard install and it broke while watching netflix.
Trigger a re-install of the plugin by disabling the feature.
got to settings - general - (scroll down to and uncheck "Play DRM-controlled content" now go back to your player hit refresh and it will request it be enabled with a button to press the page will reload and say the plugin is being installed hit refresh after a few seconds and success
all this worked for me and did not require any wierd file removal or modification
Hope anyone can find this that needs it
Modified by richardbarnett1988
zeroknight said
Visit about:third-party in the address bar to identify software injecting third-party modules and try uninstalling them. Don't have any debuggers or cheat software running in the background. Disable any security software. See if it works in Windows Safe Mode.
I read through the page on finding problems caused by third-party modules but unfortunately, none of the modules on the about:third-party page were marked as having caused crashes, and neither did any of them display an option to block/disable them.
The article you linked said that if no block option appeared, to select the "Reload with system info", and if that didn't work (which it didn't), then the Launcher Process might not be active. I checked the about:support page, it said LauncherProcess was "disabled due to failure," so I followed instructions to the about:config page to toggle it from true to false to true again, then closed the browser and reopened it.
This has had no effect. The troubleshooting page still has Launcher Process disabled due to failure, I'm still not able to access any block option on the thrid-party module page, and the Widevine plugin continues to crash when I try to watch a streaming service. I'm not sure how to determine which one of the modules on the page I should uninstall/disable, if I had the option to.
To my knowledge I don't have any debuggers/cheat software running in the background. I disabled security software and tried Windows Safe Mode, to no effect.
cor-el said
See also:
I followed all of the directions listed; no change in either the Launcher Process or the WidevineCdm.
Check your system for errors with sfc /scannow and also do a full malware scan.
The sfc /scannow said Windows found corrupt files and repaired them successfully; the full malware scan turned up nothing. Issue, unfortunately, still not fixed. The LauncherProcess is also still "disabled due to failure."
However, while searching through some other forums that had advice, and wondering if the corrupted files impacted the earlier installs (not sure which ones were corrupted and subsequently repaired), I tried again to get the Widevine to reinstall by turning off DRM-restricted content, going to a streaming site, and then turning it on there to trigger the reinstall.
The add-ons manager tab reads "Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc. will be installed shortly." This message has not gone away, and Widevine is not
I saw someone else having this similar issue on a different forum thread, they recommended looking at the browser console to see if the installation request came up. It did, but it kept going in a loop of the request timing out and not installing, then trying to install again. There were also a bunch of errors/warnings that popped up in the browser console as well. I've attached a screenshot for what's showing up in the browser console.
In that other thread the solution ended up being turning off their VPN/proxy network and then toggling the DRM switch, but I don't have a VPN or proxy. I tried going through the steps again in troubleshoot mode on Firefox, just in case the problem was with one of my plugins, but it is still in the failing to install loop. The browser console showed some of the same errors/warnings as last time, but there were also some other ones. That is the second screenshot I've attached.
Again, computers aren't my forte and I don't really know what I'm looking at, in terms of what all the technical stuff means or what's causing the problem, much less how to fix it.
zeroknight said
Check your system for errors with sfc /scannow and also do a full malware scan.
samanthalseely said
The sfc /scannow said Windows found corrupt files and repaired them successfully; the full malware scan turned up nothing. Issue, unfortunately, still not fixed. The LauncherProcess is also still "disabled due to failure." However, while searching through some other forums that had advice, and wondering if the corrupted files impacted the earlier installs (not sure which ones were corrupted and subsequently repaired), I tried again to get the Widevine to reinstall by turning off DRM-restricted content, going to a streaming site, and then turning it on there to trigger the reinstall. The add-ons manager tab reads "Widevine Content Decryption Module provided by Google Inc. will be installed shortly." This message has not gone away, and Widevine is not I saw someone else having this similar issue on a different forum thread, they recommended looking at the browser console to see if the installation request came up. It did, but it kept going in a loop of the request timing out and not installing, then trying to install again. There were also a bunch of errors/warnings that popped up in the browser console as well. I've attached a screenshot for what's showing up in the browser console. In that other thread the solution ended up being turning off their VPN/proxy network and then toggling the DRM switch, but I don't have a VPN or proxy. I tried going through the steps again in troubleshoot mode on Firefox, just in case the problem was with one of my plugins, but it is still in the failing to install loop. The browser console showed some of the same errors/warnings as last time, but there were also some other ones. That is the second screenshot I've attached. Again, computers aren't my forte and I don't really know what I'm looking at, in terms of what all the technical stuff means or what's causing the problem, much less how to fix it.
Modified by samantha
Hey Samantha, I can't believe you've had to deal with this issue for 2 months now. I'm surprised this DRM issue is hitting all browsers you've tried installing on your PC.
This leads me to believe that your ISP might be doing something weird here or that your OS is damaged in some way that SFC doesn't seem to be fixing.
I know you said it affects multiple streaming platforms but is the one w/o an app, HBO's Max?
Also can you link us to a few of the crash reports you submitted? They may provide some vital clues. You can find them by going to the about:crashes page then copy & pasting the links found there.
NoahSUMO said
Hey Samantha, I can't believe you've had to deal with this issue for 2 months now. I'm surprised this DRM issue is hitting all browsers you've tried installing on your PC. This leads me to believe that your ISP might be doing something weird here or that your OS is damaged in some way that SFC doesn't seem to be fixing. I know you said it affects multiple streaming platforms but is the one w/o an app, HBO's Max? Also can you link us to a few of the crash reports you submitted? They may provide some vital clues. You can find them by going to the about:crashes page then copy & pasting the links found there.
The one without an app is HBO Max, yeah. Which is frustrating since that's the only one I actually use with any frequency. I have occasionally tried both Chrome and Edge again to see if anything's changed there, but it's just as broken there.
The thought that it might be related to the ISP did occur to me when I was browsing through various reddit threads/support threads; one of them said they were able to fix the problem when using a mobile hotspot as it was an issue with their router. So, I also tried to see if widevine would install correctly when I was connected to a mobile hotspot instead of to wifi. No dice there unfortunately. I also was able to borrow my roommate's computer to see if the streaming sites worked on their computer, and they did without any problems.
I went to the about:crashes page and... there's nothing there, other than a crash report from September before any of this happened (here's the link, in case it is relevant: link. But again, that was over a month before any problems started happening). Apparently every time I've clicked the "submit a crash report" button when the widevinecdm crash notification comes up, nothing actually got sent or submitted? Just now I tried it again, clicked the submit crash report, and still nothing.
So it probably is something to do with my OS, I just don't know what. I did a hardware scan with the Lenovo Vantage program that came installed on the computer, everything passed except for a few of the video card scans (all related to CUDA). Then did the Lenovo Smart Performance scan, but while that told me my computer had "issues" it didn't provide any details, and just offered to fix them for a yearly fee, which isn't particularly helpful in this instance. I've done every scan I can think of doing that I've found on my computer, and I've never had any other problems with this laptop, in the past or now.
Do a clean reinstall of the current Firefox release and delete the Firefox program folder before installing a fresh copy of the current Firefox release as a normal user.
- download the Firefox installer and save the file to the desktop
*https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release
If possible uninstall your current Firefox version to cleanup the Windows Registry and settings in security software.
- do NOT remove "personal data" when you uninstall the current Firefox version, because this will remove all profile folders and you lose personal data like bookmarks and passwords including personal data in profiles created by other Firefox versions
Remove the Firefox program folder before installing that newly downloaded copy of the Firefox installer.
- (64-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
- (32-bit Firefox) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"
- it is important to delete the Firefox program folder to remove all the files and make sure there are no problems with files that were leftover after uninstalling
Your personal data like bookmarks is stored in the Firefox profile folder, so you won't lose personal data when you reinstall or update Firefox, but make sure NOT to remove personal data when you uninstall Firefox as that will remove all Firefox profile folders and you lose your personal data.
If you keep having problems, you can create a new profile as a quick test to see if your current profile is causing the problem.
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
Reinstall Firefox
Chosen Solution
I can't believe this — I finally found out what was causing the problem!
I was looking through the task manager, and noticed that Cisco AMP for Endpoints Connector was active. I'd had to install it in college to access university wifi, but never went through uninstalling it, and honestly, I'd forgotten about it and assumed it was turned off, considering it's been a few years since graduation. Since it's a security software and that was suggested earlier as a potential barrier to getting widevinecdm to work, I uninstalled it and restarted the computer.
It didn't immediately fix the problem, however, after uninstalling it I went back to about:support and clicked the refresh Firefox option, to try and trigger a reinstall of Widevine. And it worked!
I'm slowly adding back the plugins I had installed earlier, just to be sure it continues to work, and so far everything is good. I even tested the other browsers, the streaming services will play on them too now.
I feel a little silly, that the solution ended up being so easy in the end. Thank you everyone for your help.
Amazing work Samantha!! You solved it when no one else could. I'm just happy we all could get you thinking & investigating this problem a little more even though it seemed so hopeless after that huge list of things you did.
This is why I distrust a lot of these so called security software. They just do way too much or look way too innocent when they're the ones really causing the problems (Avast, Kaspersky, Norton & more).
Now we'll have to add Cisco AMP for Endpoints Connector to the list of overreaching programs to look out for.
Thank you for not giving up. Honestly, I used to just open Task Manager & study every program Windows had running there. I'd google the ones I didn't know & end up learning some of them were totally unnecessary & potentially causing performance issues so I'd kill them. It looks like in the end, having a good look inside Task Manager is the 1st thing we should all do when we get such a impossible to solve problem.
I have the same Widevine problem crashing/not working on Firefox, Edge, Chrome and on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. Re-installing and updating browsers and plugins didn't make a difference. Turned out the solution for me was the same as the Accepted answer from OP. I uninstalled Cisco AMP for Endpoints, restarted, and Widevine started working. Just want send a note here to add another confirmation of the Widevine problem with Cisco Endpoints security software.
Modified by hnmedcom
Did you already updated to 124.0.2 (see Help -> About Firefox) ?
Modified by cor-el