Flash Plug-In is Crashing

[Nashida]

his has started today.

K, basic stats: Windows XP Pro, SP3, antivirus programs are Spybot and Symantec Antivirus (both required by my college or I can't access their network)

The Flash Player Plug-In keeps crashing in Chrome. I either get the navy-blue "Aw, Snap!" page or a yellow bar telling me the Flash player has crashed. I first noticed it on Facebook when I was trying to play some of my favorite games, and at first some games would work and others wouldn't, then none would work. Other sites seems to be doing the same thing: either reporting Flash has crashed or a black window is shown where the game or video would be.

So far I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling Chrome, which hasn't worked, clearing browsing history on both my PC and Chrome, updating Flash Player, and reinstalling Flash. I've got Firefox open to use Flash Player now, but it's been painfully slow for ages, especially with a certain game I play on Facebook. I preferred Chrome simply because it was fast, but this issue is knocking out nearly most of the sites I frequent daily.

The only thing I haven't tried yet is rolling the system back on a System Restore to a past recovery point, but that makes me nervous even though the latest save point is Saturday.

Any help? I'm actively looking for fixes as I type this.

[Geek King]

You've hit most of the top items. The only thing I would add right now, is to make sure you uninstall flash before reinstalling it, just to make sure you don't have a corrupt file sticking around. Oh, also see if an earlier version of Chrome works. It could be a browser update issue.

[Nashida]

I did some more poking around and stumbled across something called Flash Storage within Chrome. I have no idea what it is, and I didn't want to touch it, but I am wondering if this is like how Java has the ability to clear it's history somewhat.

Also, jumped on Facebook today and flash-based games were working again. Last night I couldn't get them to work at all, while other sites like Youtube and Gaia - which use Flash - were fine.

My mother also has started to have problems with Flash, and she's using Chrome on a Vista machine, and this is also only when she uses Facebook. We're both wondering if this is a Facebook problem more than a Flash problem.