When Flash crashes, Firefox 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 report IDs, and then post some of the recent ones here.

(Unfortunately, Flash crash reports often don't tell us a whole lot, but I think it's still worth a look.)

This is some standard guidance that addresses the most common issues with the Flash Player plugin. I'm sure you've seen some of it before, but just in case:

(1) If you have any recorders/downloaders that interact with Flash media make sure they are as up-to-date as possible, or disable them temporarily. This might not be applicable to issues with games.

(2) Disable hardware graphics acceleration in Firefox and in Flash

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

"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > 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

(3) Disable the protected mode feature. It has security benefits, but is not compatible with all systems for some reason. You can disable it by creating or editing a settings file.

The following pages/posts provide different approaches for that:

• Adobe support article under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

• Manual steps: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/968190?page=5#answer-509209

• Batch file to automate the manual steps: https://support.mozilla.org/questions/982093#answer-518078

Flash needs to completely unload from memory (exiting and starting Firefox up again might help) before this takes effect.

Any improvement?

Disable Java from the Java control panel in the Security tab. Uncheck "enable java content in web browser" option. Restart firefox.

Hi WisdomTooth, some games use the Java plugin and some use the Flash plugin. Since the original question specifies an error in Flash, I don't think it would help to disable the Java plugin in this case.

Hi, thanks for all your helpful tips, I can only apologise for taking so long to acknowledge your help,. When I posted the questiion I was so fed up with the crashing that I changed browsers and started using Chrome, which, by the way is not much better, it doesnt crash so often but it has a lot of issues/glitches, general tracking habits and I dont like that. So Im back with Firefox and Shockwave is still causing crashing only now its doing it with videos too , which it never did it so I am now going to try the (rest) of your suggestions that I havent already tried. You have gone to a great effort to try to help me and I really am grateful but I havent exactly shown my gratitude and for that I am sorry... I am going to fix this issue now and I wont give up until i find the cause:) so thanks so much and I will keep you posted on my progress, (if you want to know that is, lol)