I have a similar problem on Mac. Adobe Flash 11.3.300.262 is causing Firefox all kinds of problems. Firefox locks up with the spinning colored ball when I try to use any site that uses Flash. The symptom is described as "(Firefox Not Responding)" and I have to force it to quit. Sometimes Firefox will recover in some fashion, others times it has to be forced off again. If I disable Adobe Flash, the problem goes away but I cannot use the myriad of sites that require Adobe Flash. (I can't do my USA Today Crossword!). I even went so far as to do a clean install of both Firefox and Adobe Flash with the most recent versions of each and the problem was still there.

Safari 5.1.7 (7534.57.4) does not have this problem. (Firefox and Safari use the same plugin). Flash works fine and I can use it on all sorts of sites which need it. Somehow, this seems counter-intuitive given Apple's hostility against Flash. Go figure.

Bottom line, at this point, is that if I want to access a site that uses Flash I have to use Safari!

MacBook Air (June, 2012), 2 GHz intel Core i7, 8GB 1600 MHz DDR3, 256 GB Flash SSD, OS X 10.7.4 (Lion), FireFox 13.0.1, Safari 5.1.7. (yes, Mac's finally can now use USB 3).

Thanks for replying to my question though so far everything else seems to work okay but the games. I don't know what Safari 5.1.7 is as I'm not really a tech kind of person. I think I may just uninstall the latest version of Adobe and go back to 11.3.300.257 that I had and see if that solves the issue. I appreciate your answer very much though. DFelice

Well now it looks like I can't get the last verion I had which was Adobe Flash Player 11.3.300.257 through the Adobe site nor CNET it said it would take me to a 3rd party to get it and couldn't vouch for it's security. Guess I'll just uninstall and reinstall the latest version and hope that does the trick. DFelice

Safari is the browser that comes with Apple Mac OS X. Safari works with the latest flash. It appears that Firefox on Mac stops responding, Firefox on Window on Windows sort of, IE?

FYI, Firefox is cross platform on Mac, Linux, and Windows and usually has few serious. I've used it on all three for since it first came out and was a lifesaver when I had to work on all three platforms, especially doing beta on Linux. Its always the first thing I install after I get a new machine. I don't recall any that completely froze it on my Mac.

I guess I'll stick with Safari if I need flash until there is a resolution. I have installed the Flashblock 15.5.15.1 extension so I don't get into any problems using Firefox.

I do not understand anything, 13.0.1 firefox crashing constantly. I received yesterday in the flash player download Adobe Flash Player plugin for firefox and 11.3.300.262 I have another flash player 11.3.300.257. Help me I do not know what to do and I am not specialist in computer science.

I uninstall and reinstall without the problems am resolved, in addition to my pc windows xp each inque me that my virtual memory is not enough.

This is due to flash player when I use firefox. All videos, music or games kidding

I wish I had the answer. Any differences we see are probably because we're using different platforms (Windows vs Mac OS X - both use Intel processors). It seems to me that the problem is worse on the Mac because Firefox completely freezes.

This is a bit technical but this is what I had to do to circumvent the problem. This is not a solution and I cannot recommend it. Hopefully, this will give someone a hint as to what to look for.

I spent a week and actually deleted every Firefox file on my Mac system . I'm not sure what to do next except to use Safari for Flash and Firefox for everything else. I much prefer Firefox for everything but until this is resolved I'm at a crossroads.

A note: Plugins are not part of a browser per se. They are in the bowels of the system and all browsers use the same plugins. On both Mac OS and Windows the browsers are Safari (Mac default), Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Internet Explorer (IE-Windows default), to name but a few. All the browsers do the same thing. Things like the user interface, look and feel, extensions, skins and themes and so one. I prefer Firefox because of the look and feel, the vast collection of extensions and themes and the Mozilla community which does not have a corporate axe to grind. But enough commercial.

I deleted all references to both Firefox and Flash on my system. computer->library computer->applications, computer->users->userid->library

I then downloaded Firefox 13.01 from the Mozilla site and the latest Flash from the Adobe site directly and reinstalled both. I tested Flash under Safari and had no problems. When I brought Firefox up I immediately disabled

Firefox->preferences->general->manage add-ons->plugin->Shockwave Flash

and added the extension Flashblock 15.5.15.1 for added protection.

and every thing is running as before except Flash sites.

My Mac is brand new with the latest OS X Lion updates (10.7.4, which is stable - finally). I have not found any other significant show stoppers using anything but Flash.

I have no idea what to do next except to use Safari for sites that need Flash and Firefox for everything else. So I guess I use Safari for the USA Today crosswords and Firefox for everything else until this issue is resolved.

I wish I could be of more help.

Hi All, the difference between .257 and .262 is quite small and is only relevant to Windows users. Please see the following articles for more information on Flash problems and the option of rolling back to Flash 10.3 or Flash 11.2:

• Flash 11.3 doesn't load video in Firefox
• Adobe Flash plugin has crashed - Prevent it from happening again

I don't know whether the Mac has the same issues or different issues.

I tried disinstalling the latest and installed an older copy I got off the Adobe site. Just more problems. The MacBook Air has slightly different software than a regular MacBook Pro does - an additional software update. Steve's revenge from the afterlife? I've lost a weekend on this and its time to do others things. I'll revisit this later when I have time and the problems moved.

Hey again, After hours of reading and checking to make sure I had the right things enabled, which I did, I gave up and uninstalled the latest version of Adobe Flash Player they gave me and re-installed it and later I had my friend get on Messenger and we tried the games and it worked this time. For some strange reason when I updated it did take me 3 tries before it took it. So even though it told me it was installed, apparently it really wasn't. Just goes to show you that you can't trust what you see. What really had me scratching my head was I went over to Internet Explorer 8 which I never use anymore and found out you now can get Mozilla plug in check list over there and when I did it showed that the same Adobe Flash Player was outdated but it was to a different version. Not knowing if this would help I installed that new one too and it said it took it which it didn't. So I guess you can only have 1 version installed on 1 computer even though 2 different browsers take different versions. This gets too complicated for me. LOL! I work with computers all the time at work but not the technical stuff. If it's something simple I can guess through it to help someone but this is my first personal desktop computer for myself and it is an older one to begin with so I have not had experience using different types. We use the desktop at work as well. I personally don't like laptops for various reasons. And the many browsers people mention go way over my head. Thanks for answering that question though and replying back. DFelice

Well, after hours of trying to figure it out I gave up and un-installed and re-installed that last verion of Adobe Flash Player and now it seems I can play games again in Messenger. Everything else had been fine just that. I can only figure it was because it was having a hard time updating the first time and took me 3 tries. So even though it said it was installed, apparently it wasn't done correctly. Though when I couldn't figure out what was wrong at first I looked and checked to see all the things were enabled that were supposed to be and they were. I even tried to go to the Adobe site and download the last version I had and couldn't find it. Kept coming up with the new version. Others said if you download a particular older version it may not have all the security features in it. This really gets to be a bit much, especially when you're by yourself and have only a smattering of knowledge of technical things. Thanks fore responding to my question. DFelice

Yes, this is beyond frustrating. Flash did not uninstall cleanly. Installing the latest previous version only made things worse. Flash had its hooks so deep into the system that I had erase my hard disk ans reinstall the system software. I now have a clean machine w/o Flash and until someone can give an intelligent solution rather than "try this", I just will not use Flash. It is very irritating because the latest Flash works with Safari but not with Firefox. Until Firefox can provide a solution, I'm not using either Firefox or Flash.

I had this same problem a few days ago after a new adobe flash player update I received notification of upon boot up as it always seems to appear at, after the adobe update I could no longer access anything that had to do using the flashplayer in Mozilla Firefox, what really got my goat is the 32bit version of IE9 would only lock up upon loading almost to the point of locking up my machine, I contacted Adobe only when I found an email address that probably wasn't supposed to be displayed and wrote him a message explaining what happened which was verified on three machines one I used for a test dummy, I did a backup restore and all worked right, did the flashplayer update and wammo, nothing worked again, so I disabled the update notifications all together for Adobe, oh yeah, one of the replies from adobe was to disable realplayers download function for the browser which I replied what business is it of Adobe if I use realplayer or not and it was not nice of Adobe to force me to disable a piece of software I paid for to be able to use a piece of software that I'm forced to use that is third party software at best to get flash content to work in my browser, not nice at all, now firefox with this last update I haven't been able to goto my yahoo mail without logging in at least 2 to 4 times during the session, this only started with the last firefox update which was forced on me without a choice to opt out of, thank goodness for backups, don't do without them, I maintain 3 win7 machines, 2 pc's and one laptop...Mozilla please quit forcing these updates, if it ain't broke, I don't want to fix it..or in this case break it..

Hi beardeddone, on your question about repeated Yahoo logins --

with this last update I haven't been able to goto my yahoo mail without logging in at least 2 to 4 times during the session

-- please see these similar threads:

• Windows: Email session timed out message appears after less than five minutes
• Mac: I am able to log in to Yahoo mail but it keeps asking me for my password every 2 or 3 mins

Thank You this seemed to work, who would have guessed....

This is exactly what I see

Additional information

Clean install on a MacBook air (June 2012)

 erased disc
 Mac 10.7.4 Lion (11E2705) installed
 applied all current updates 

Adobe Flash 11.3.300.262 installed 6/25/2012

Test URL

http://puzzles.usatoday.com/ 30 sec annoy commercial regular puzzle answer to first clue "now". 6/25/2012

All browsers downloaded and installed 6/25/2012

Safari 5.1.7 (7533.74) - works as expected Opera 11.64 build 1403 - works as expected Google Chrome 19.0.1084.56 (Chrome is up to to date) - works as expected Firefox 13.0.1 - freezes, must force quit to get out of my system

Where do you suspect the problem is?

@SkepticalBright, You didn't mention the 32bit version of IE9, it froze up on me to the point of locking up the computer with .262 installed and opera worked fine, I would go back to the previous version of adobe flash player....

Sorry to hear that. The problem seems to be more pervasive than I thought. I am doing my work on a MacBook with OS X, 64 bit. I do not have IE9 installed.

I have opened a separate thread for the problem to document what I see on Mac OS X and have documented what I have found on with Safari, Google Chrome, Opera (all of which work with the new flash), and Firefox (which does not)..

Until there is a resolution (not a try this, I have pretty much exhausted all similar forum items), I have deleted Firefox from my system and am using Safari as my browser.