Flash video causing 105% CPU usage spikes

My new 21.5" does exactly the same. The reset from sleep cures it, at least temporarily. I'll report it tomorrow.

Let me clarify my earlier post. My iMac still spikes when watching flash-movies, but so does my Macbook Pro and always has. The problem I had with my new iMac was that even after I shut down the flash-movie, and even Safari, and even after the spike dissapeared from Activity Monitorm the computer was still very sluggish. This has never happened with my Macbook Pro. If I restarted my new iMac and didn't watch any flash-stuff I could use it without any hickups for many hours. As soon as I watched a flash-movie it started and persisted. This persistence has disappeared with me updating the flash plugin.

Sorry if I wasn't clear before.

/R.

How would I go about reinstalling the flash player plug-in?

This is what Apple Care told me to do:

Remove 'Flash player.plugin' from Macintosh HD/Library/Internet plug-ins/. Then go to youtube.com and when a flash movie will try to load there will be a message saying you need to install flash with a link to Adobe. Press the link, download the installer, and install.

Hope that helps.

/R.

OK, thanks for that. By the way, it didn't make a blind bit of difference. Cheers.

I don't know if this is related, but my MBP's battery drains excessively fast when I sleep it with a flash movie page on the screen. For example, I'll watch a HULU show, close the lid, the computer sleeps. An hour later the battery would be 50% drawn down.

I mention this because there seems to be a problem with sleeping/waking iMac's and running flash.

BTW, my iMac never sleeps, and I've never experiences these slowdowns. At least yet.

This is really a weird problem. I got my mac last friday afternoon. Migrated my stuff from my old 20". Noticed the prob. by Fri. night. Switched from Firefox to Safari to Opera. Still had high cpu usage but not over 75%. Then I'd re-boot and everything looked good for a while. Then it started again. Then removed Firefox and Re-installed. Same problem. Then I found this thread Tues? and put it to sleep 1 time for a minute. Problem went away. Since then I've done all the stuff I had been doing but no problems. ***? I haven't re-booted since Tues. eve. nor put it to sleep other than when it sleeps at night after 30 min. of no use.

I got my 27" Imac a week tomorrow and I realized it have performance issues.

1) If you leave it on for more than 5 hours, some applications like Rosetta Stone, Front-Row, iPhoto, Garage band and others start running slowly. I always end up having to restart the system.

2) And this morning I encountered the flash problem, I had to download the video I was watching on the internet before I could finish it. NOT COOL AT-ALL. I DON'T HAVE TIME TO DOWNLOAD, Apple.
I'm disappointed; but I belief someone out there is going to DO SOMETHING ABOUT THOSE PROBLEMS.
This is not a VISTA. IS IT? Apple.

And How come my magic mouse doesn't do TWO-FINGER SWIPE in iPhoto or Safari as PROMISED.

This is NOT an iMac issue. it's a known issue with Flash that happens on any Mac. Uninstall Flash and reinstall it as Carolyn says. I can't believe people are returning Macs over this.

Same thing iMac cant handle the flash problem even persists after safari and flash close. Tried the general permission, pram, ect fixes to no avail. Will try 32bit safari from here on.

I've had a new 27" Imac for a week now, and noticed the problem within the first couple of days. But, I have encountered several other symptoms outside of Flash that might help the pros on this thread narrow this down.

1) I first experienced the problem after several hours of heavy editing in IMovie rather than in Flash. Here's how it happens. First, audio becomes choppy and playback increasingly jumpy until the whole machine eventually grinds to a halt. I thought this was an IMovie problem at first. (does Imovie use Flash?)

2) I pulled up a YouTube video, and there was the exact same issue. So, I am getting an identical problem in I-Movie. Unless Imovie uses Flash, I don't know, this shows me that it's not Flash.

3) A Quicktime video I tried to view in my gallery on me.com had a different issue, it froze after playing back for 14 seconds and would not load further.

4) The night before last, a cooling fan came on. I assumed i had just been working for too long and it just needed a few minutes with the fan to cool off. I went to bed and got up the next morning to find the fan still running. Something is overheating.

5) While Flash may trigger it, given enough time up and running, things start to bog down regardless of Flash. This afternoon, without running video of any kind (Flash or otherwise) my machine ground to a halt again -- to the point that I was getting the swirling rainbow and extreme latency trying to type an email in Entourage.

6) I've been watching the Activity Monitor. The longer the computer is on, the more CPU resources dwindle. When I started typing this post, I had 2.47 GB free. At this point I am down to 2.19 GB (correction, now 2.18 GB). I haven't opened any additional software.

I definitely think that this is a hardware bug of some kind. There seems to be a leak of system resources that goes on the longer I work on my computer. Flash seems to be trigger it, but I certainly don't think, from what I've seen using this machine pretty heavily over the past week, that this is a problem limited to Flash.

*For those keeping track:*
OSX 10.6.1 Build 10A2155
Migrated Time Machine back up from a 15" MacBook newly upgraded with Snow Leopard.
Flash 10.0r32

I'm curious whether there is anyone with a 27" IMac not having this issue. Regardless, Apple owes us all an explanation and a fix -- soon. This is a great machine and I want to see what it can do if it's running properly.

Agree w/ Subcide -- tthiel1, this is a bigger problem than Flash. People shouldn't waste their time installing and reinstalling things and playing around with settings. All I have learned from reading this thread is that people think it's fixed when they reboot and everything works fine, but given a bit of time, the problem invariably returns.

And, for those counting, lost another .02 GB of CPU memory since my last post a few minutes ago. Down to 2.17 GB now. No flash videos running. If I keep working, my CPU will have tied itself in knots in the next hour or two -- without even loading a Flash video.

Yes this is a mac issue. Looks at the error log in console. Clearly you will see that there is problems with the video driver. This is unacceptable given they only have 1 video card they chose for this model. Unlike windows machines where there many different kinds of videos that they have to keep up on. They should have tested it more. But Apple is the best company I have ever dealt with. They are sending me some new speakers for my troubles, the people I have dealt with are very gracious. You don't have to talk to some foreign person when you call for help. They know how to take care of their customers and I'm very happy with Apple despite this issue. I trust that they are working correcting this issue. But yeah anyone who can reason would return their machines because of this problem. As for me I would return dirty diapers to Wal-Mart if I had to.

there were problems with some graphics cards and Flash Player 10. have you checked the Adobe site to see about any noted issues in the system requirements