I noticed this, too... the problem seems to occur for me when I have tabs open that use flash for video, most notably YouTube. I have to kill fx and re-open to get it to drop. Very annoying. I don't know why there was a need to include something like this, but it doesn't seem well tested.

The command line that launches this process (as a child process of fx), for reference: "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\plugin-container.exe" --channel=4452.1336c6a0.231575676 "C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32.dll" 4452 plugin \\.\pipe\gecko-crash-server-pipe.4452

Yes, in that screenshot, plugin-container.exe has used more than 18 hours of cpu time (compared with 18 seconds used by my antivirus). Yes, plugin-container.exe is using as much again and more memory than firefox itself. Granted, I have a lot of tabs open, and firefox has been open for days, but those numbers seem ridiculous to me.

same problem. rather annoying. currently i just keep shutting it down from task manager til it goes away. else i can't do anything as it's using too much cpu. i have read methods on how to fix it, but either it wont work or i am unable to find out how to make the changes supposedly needed.

Firefox has been extremely slow when showing flash videos since I've updated. Even low quality videos are causing Firefox to stutter now.

About every third video I view begins to stutter and then finally hangs. This causes FF to become unresponsive and I have to kill it. I am using ver 3.6.6.

Once in a while, I am told that FlashPlayer has stopped and I get the opportunity to send THEM the error, but the rest of the time it appears to just be FF that quits.

This has GOT to be fixed.

I'm having all these problems too. After about 5 years of using Firefox, I went back to Internet Explorer 7.

Background A new Firefox crash prevention feature was introduced in Firefox 3.6.4 to load Adobe Flash (as well as Microsoft Silverlight and Apple QuickTime, on Windows) in a separate process named "plugin-container". When one of these "out-of-process" plugins crashes or stops responding for a specified time period (10 seconds in Firefox 3.6.4 or 45 seconds in Firefox 3.6.6) , only the plugin is terminated and you will get a plugin crash notice with the option of sending a crash report to Mozilla. The purpose of this new feature is to prevent the entire Firefox browser from crashing when a plugin hangs or crashes. Ref: What is plugin-container Adobe Flash plugin has crashed - Prevent it from happening again Send plugin crash reports to help Mozilla improve Firefox

If you are having problems wit plugin.container and reading the above articles isn't helpful:

You can stop plugins from loading in a separate "plugin-container" process by setting all dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.* preferences to false in about:config as explained here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins#Disabling_crash_protection

Or, as a last resort, download a Firefox version prior to 3.6.4 and then uninstall Firefox and install the previous version. I would suggest 3.5.10 since it is more secure than Firefox 3.6.3. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an_old_version_of_Firefox for more information on downgrading Firefox.

That's just it - I don't get a plugin crash notice. FF just quite responding and "goes grey" (Vista & Win7).

Also, when FF crashes, and I kill it and restart, FF gives no indication that there ever was a previous session like it used to do.

Make sure that you allow the plugin-container process full access to internet in your firewall.

Did you try to disable the OOPP by setting all dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.* prefs to false?

To open the about:config page, type about:config in the location (address) bar and press the Enter key, just like you type the url of a website to open a website. If you see a warning then you can confirm that you want to access that page.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

"Did you try to disable the OOPP by setting all dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.* prefs to false? "

Once more, please: OOPP?

I know about the config file and how to access it, but the OOPP is unknown to me.

Bill OOPP is an acronyn referring to the functions of plugin-container.exe OOPP = Out Of Process Plugin

Means certain plugins are run outside of the Firefox.exe process (as shown in Windows Task Manager, Processes tab); 3 plugins currently are run in plugin-container.exe: Adobe Flash, Silverlight or Quicktime. See: https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6.4/releasenotes/

Okay. I'll see what I can do with it.

Thankyou Alicewyman,

Disabling the ipc processes through 'about:config' has made firefox usable again for me. My ff was locking for about 45 seconds on most videos then not playing, or even crashing (rock solid system till this). Perhaps not coincidentally one of the settings in the ipc.plugin config is 45.

Anyway, Chrome can wait, but I'm guessing you're losing some custom over this.

I shut off all the IPC stuff also and FF seems to be running a lot better. I still get an occasional freeze in a video BUT that is probably the site instead of FF and the download rate is pretty slow sometimes.

Thanks for the help.

jomt, You're welcome, and yes, it's odd that Firefox would freeze up during the 45-second interval set in dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs (this preference is part of the "plugin hang detector" that Firefox uses to decide when a plugin is no longer responding and should be terminated).

There are a couple of related bug reports listed at the end of http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_... that refer to the plugin hang detector, if you're interested.

Bill and jomt, I'm glad that disabling OOPP/crash protection has helped. If you want to try re-enabling it sometime in the future, maybe after the next Firefox update to see if the "bugs" have been worked out, just toggle the dom.ipc.plugins.enabled. l preferences back to the default "true" values in about:config

Thank you Alice. I will do that.

Bill

>>You can disable the plugincontainer.exe by

1) going typing in about:config in the address bar 2) type in "dom.ipc" 3) disable the 4 values that say true

thanks it works

I am a loyal, satisfied user of Firefox BUT Plugin-container is crashing my computer several times a day randomly. I am not a techie, and I am not going to reconfigure the guts of my computer to remedy Firefox's problem. I will revert to IE until Firefox fixes the problem. :(

@Paul:

reverting to IE is, of course, you choice; but I urge you to give the configuration changes a try. It is definitely NOT reconfiguring the guts of your computer. It is only a simple readjustment of the configuration of Firefox using it's own control file. It worked for me and I can now enjoy youtube videos again trouble-free.

Bill

Thanks, Bill. Maybe I will give it a try when I can muster my courage and follow all the instructions to perform the necessary surgery. I do hate to use IE but I am wasting about 2 hours a day dealing with this Firefox bug.

I am very upset with FireFox. I to into task manager to delete the plug in container, and it keeps coming back. If they dont fix it today with a new FF version, they just lost me. Why do they constantly add this stupid stuff to something that already worked so well? I dont want to have to go in and do all that jibberish above. I am not a techie, but I use the computer constantly. I should have one EASY EASY fix. Just give me an EASY new version.