A peculiar problem

All [ESPN|http://espn.go.com> video play here, version 9.0r115

I fixed the problem, at least at ESPN.com and YouTube.

Instead of just pulling the plug-in file out manually, I went here

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/alternates/

and downloaded the Flash Player Uninstaller. After I ran the Uninstaller, I ran the current Flash Player Installer. This put the same 9.0r115 back, but now those sites are not freezing Safari. Firefox seems to be OK too.

Thanks to all for the suggestions. I also downloaded the most updated version of the adobe flash player from here ... http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/ ... and that solved my problems.

Cheers to all for the help!

Message was edited by: rvm_esq.

I too had the 9.0r115 flash player. I uninstalled as suggested and then reinstalled as others have. However, when I reinstalled the player, those sites were freezing up again. So my hat's off to those of you who were able to get around the problem without completely dumping flash plugin. It appears I'm going to have to run without it until this bug is figured out and corrected.

Always reboot! Even if it isn't "required" after software installation/removal. I did a reboot after the uninstall and then reinstalled. Viola!! Back to normal, no problems with locked up websites. Thanks to all for the assistance.

I know the problem is "solved" for everyone, but I'd like to chime in with my findings so the guilty party gets the blame.

I spent a lot of Friday night experimenting with various browsers and html files and isolated the problem to a particular flash player on espn.com -- if I ad-blocked it, everything else worked fine, if I didn't, the browser would crash and other flash sites would stop working, regardless of which browser I used, until I rebooted.

Then, Saturday afternoon, my suspicions were confirmed when the following message appeared on another Apple Discussions thread ( http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1431695&start=0&tstart=0):


Keith Lam

Posts: 1
Registered: Jun 3, 2005
I know lots of you were/are having problems with ESPN.com crashing your browser. You get the spinning beach ball of death and then you need to force quit. If this has happened to you within the last 24 hours. As in after 8pm EST March 7, 2008, you need to restart your computer and you can visit ESPN.com again without any crashing. You don't need to delete anything or change anything. Just a simple restart. Thanks for your patience while this was fixed.

15" MBP rev2 Mac OS X (10.5.2) ESPN.com Web Developer

Perhaps if enough people are aware that espn.com caused this problem, someone will figure out the how/why of it and point Apple toward fixing the vulnerability.

Mine works fine, here's my info report on the flash plugin:


Display Name: Flash Player.plugin
Name: Flash Player.plugin
Path: /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/Flash Player.plugin
URL: file://localhost/Library/Internet%20Plug-Ins/Flash%20Player.plugin/
Kind: Plug-in
Directory Valence: 1
Permissions: drwxrwxr-x (775)
Owner: 501 - kheidse
Group: 80 - admin
Creation Date: Mon, 11 Jun 2007, 2:17PM
Modification Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007, 5:12PM
Attribute Modification Date: Sun, 14 Oct 2007, 5:12PM
Access Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2008, 11:22PM
Backup Date:
Volume: NO
Directory: YES
Package: YES
Application: NO
Invisible: NO
Locked: NO
Opened: NO
Movable: YES
Deletable: YES
Mac Alias: NO
Symbolic Link: NO
Has Custom Icon: NO
Extension Hidden: NO
Volume Refnum: -100
Parent Directory ID: 21551
Permissions Mode: 16893 (040775), (0x41FD)
Node ID: 899169
Node Flags: 16
Sharing Flags: 0
User Privileges: 0
User Access: 7
Finder Flags: 8192 (0x2000)
kIsOnDesk (0x0001): NO
kColor (0x000E): NO
kIsShared (0x0040): NO
kHasNoINITs (0x0080): NO
kHasBeenInited (0x0100): NO
kHasCustomIcon (0x0400): NO
kIsStationery (0x0800): NO
kNameLocked (0x1000): NO
kHasBundle (0x2000): YES
kIsInvisible (0x4000): NO
kIsAlias (0x8000): NO
Extended Finder Flags: 0 (0x0)
Finder location: (-1, -1)
Folder Window Bounds: top 0, left 0, bottom 0, right 0
Finder Scroll Position: (0, 0)
Finder Put Away Folder ID: 0
Inode's Device: 234881026
Number of Hard Links: 3
Device Type: 0
Blocks Allocated for File: 0
Optimal I/O Blocksize: 4096
User Defined Flags: 0 (0x0)
File Generation Number: 0
Extended Attributes: length: 32 : com.apple.FinderInfo = ""

Spotlight Metadata: 20 attributes
Owner: 501
Group: 80
Type: 0
File extension hidden: 0
Item ID: 899169
Created: 2007-06-11 14:17:25 -0500
Filename: Flash Player.plugin
Modified: 2007-10-14 17:12:05 -0500
Creator: 0
File label: 0
File invisible: 0
Number of items: 1
Attributes: 2007-10-14 17:12:13 -0500
Finder Flags: 8192
Display name: Flash Player.plugin
Type: Plug-in
Content Type: com.apple.plugin
Content Tree: com.apple.plugin, com.apple.bundle, public.directory, public.item, com.apple.package
Content modified: 2007-10-14 17:12:05 -0500
Content created: 2007-06-11 14:17:25 -0500