I have the same problem, going on anything with flash freezes up firefox entirely. Ending the plugin container's process fixes the problem temporarily though.

I've had to disable the crash protection. I am a flash developer and have the flash debug player installed. When it throws an exception window up the entire browser freezes and I have to kill the plugin-container.exe process to get control of my browser back.

Unfortunately, after doing this, it has rendered the address bar useless, I cannot type in it at all, so have to restart my browser anyway.

Update - after changing the crash timer to -1 as suggested by Firefox, the problem SEEMS to be gone. And for Dunky - try minimizing the window(s) and bringing them back up again. Sometimes that's helped me with the "can't click anywhere" issue that you mentioned. Dunno why it helps, but it does!

Maybe a nubbie question but where can you edit this crash timer?

I've had the same problem for the last couple of weeks, and tried the suggestion to disable plug-in container and it seems to have fixed it.

I'm a computer amateur, but the link posted by "the-edmeister" was easy to follow

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins

Thanks!!

2

Not exactly a "solution", but maybe a clue: I often get a message saying ""additional plug-ins are needed to access all the media on this page". I don't WANT to access them, so I just close that message box.

Is it possible that repeatedly just asking and perhaps placing in queue the "needed" plug in eventually accumulates enough processes or plug-ins to overwhelm the "container"?

I also have a question: what's this crash timer? How does one alter its setting(s)?

Correctly, I had the same problem. Another Mozilla support forum (interestingly yet not surprisingly, the moderator fully defended the plugin container stating nothing was wrong with it but quick to cite other "probable" reasons) provided me the instructions (modifying the config) to essentially disable the container. My problem would arise whether I had one tab or more open and running Flash or not but definitely when I had at least one instance of GOM Player running. GOM was not opened by any web page but solely because I'd opened it to have a multimedia file running. Are we clear? Flash or not, multiple tabs or not, the sole constant here was that Firefox was GOM player were running. Always, the issue was the same: to get usability back, I had to End Task on Firefox, GOM Player, and the Plugin container.

Yet, this guy (I wish I could find the posts again) strictly defended the container. Why? Why weren't the users listened to? Flash had never crashed on me before. GOM had never crashed on me before. Not all Firefox users are witless boobs who were advised to use it by some anti-Microsoft tech support agent of this or that company. The experiences and hardware configurations varied enough to indicate that something could be amiss yet this was dismissed out-of-hand.

I think this post captures most users' sentiments well-enough:

"Why can't you just make a browser that works well and leave it alone instead of highly suggesting we upgrade to the newest version of Firefox which seems like once a week now and causes more problems every time. I'm loosing faith."

I have disabled my plugin container and not had a single issue with Firefox or GOM since. I've not left Firefox yet but that's solely due to nothing else being better, not because it's vastly superior.

Need info about "disable the plugin container". If I use Task Manager and End Process, ending plugin container kills the whole Firefox operation.

Is there something I can do in advance?

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed

Last item is: Disable the Hang Timer

That's the one that fixed it for me.

[https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed]

We'll try it that way... weird

Yup, same thing here, although the "freeze up" when playing vids is not new. For the last few versions, if I go to close a page that just played a video (like Youtube) then Firefox freezes up, and I have to go to Task Manager to shut it down. If I manage to shut it down by just closing Firefox, I can't open it again because it says "Firefox is already running" so that's when I found that shutting it down through Task Manager is about the only way to go. Since the last update, there is "hang time" after closing a page with video, but sometimes not a total freeze. It's about fifty now, between hang time and resume versus freeze up and the need to shut down via Task Manager. Since the last update, the new bug is the plug-in-container.exe error, the same as being reported here. It's not just happening with video pages, but quite a variety of web pages now. Even my email -- if I open a new mail on a new tab, it freezes up and reports the plug-in-container error. This is the most difficulty I've ever had with Firefox, and I'm even debating switching. :( Hope Mozilla responds with a fix.

Weeks of TRASH = FIREFOX 3.66

All three of my computers have been totally worthless since I upgraded to FF3.66. Each are built/configured differently. Each has a different OS. Each has all the above problems. Crashes constantly, RAM & CPU usage on a Q9650 is always near 100%. After screwing around for days I finally came here and found out that I was among a very large and upset group of users. With the last few upgrade I've had minor problems with my selection of add-ons Firefox disabled them for a later fix. I found a new DL today, 3.67 so I installed it figuring the problem was addressed. After installation of 3.67 it still says it's 3.66??

I went to their site to find help from them and couldn't get anyplace until I came here and read about my problem. Thanks for giving me a clear head so I could find a good solution.

My solution was to remove all Mozilla/Firefox products and then install other browsing options. It felt funny because for the first time in years I had to use Microsoft Internet Explorer to find other options. My computer is problem free and fast as usual now.

I wonder how many other users have abandoned them due to this BS?? I for one will probably stick with my new choices now.

YES, Weeks of TRASH = FIREFOX 3.66

When I click on https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed it reads as http://example.com/ and yields:

You have reached this web page by typing "example.com", "example.net", or "example.org" into your web browser.

These domain names are reserved for use in documentation and are not available for registration. See RFC 2606, Section 3.

F Lefever - try my second post with the link as a Knowledge Base article. That one works.

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/The+Adobe+Flash+plugin+has+crashed#Disable_hang_protection

worked for me

hello everybody... same thing over here, in every site having flash videos on it! problem persist in windows XP Pro 64 and Vista business 64 even after 2 updates of firefox (3.6.8). Any official answer from mozilla??

@ the-edmeister,

Thought this had worked but after a day its done it again, the comment box on forums ect just freezes, yet i can still use the rest of firefox, hen sometimes if i open a new firefox window, the whole thing is frozen, again only abale to close it with the little x in top right.....

This thing is getting really annoting now, like some peeps have said, firefox is one of the better ones out there but this is rendering it unusable as if i have windows open that i need to keep open, i have o also close them down to get it to work again.

thanks tho.....

the-edmeister advice............ My advice is to disable the "crash protection" and see if that solves your problems. See this KB article: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Plugin-container_and_out-of-process_plugins

I found a solution that works for me. I renamed firefox.exe to firefox_xyz.exe - after that all freezing problems disappeared. Also had kaspersky and malwarebyte scan my comp for issues, but it seems my system is clean.

I had the same problem and the solution was to disable the crush protection.