Flash player crashing my macbook pro

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Level 1

14 points

Flash player crashing my macbook pro

I have a late 2007 mbp 3,1.
Playing flash video always crashes my macbook pro, not immediately but after a few flash player clips. It does not crash the browser but the whole system, and I get a gray screen telling me in different languages I need to hold down the power button to turn off and restart my mac. I have spent hours trying to track down why this happened but to no avail.
The *only workaround* I know is to use the flash player marked flashplayer10r45_2. I have tried all other versions and even excitedly all beta versions, but this problem remains unresolved. And now Firefox 4 won't even accept this version anymore.

- Is anyone else experiencing this?
-- Do you have a workaround? (one to force FF4 to use the old player or to prevent crashes with any player)

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Apr 11, 2011 4:28 AM

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Answer 1

rainwolf Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 12, 2011 1:42 AM in response to rainwolf

Let's assume I have long tried all the standard approaches as laid out above, none of them worked, that's how I found the specific version of flash player that does not crash my computer. And I have tried every version after that, also the newest and the beta versions and used the uninstaller. With FF4 however, I can't revert back to the old flash player or I'd have ditch FF.

My machine crashed twice today in the span of 10 minutes when watching 2 different youtube clips, and twice I got an error report where the most important part looked like this:

Interval Since Last Panic Report: 263443 sec
Panics Since Last Report: 5
Anonymous UUID: F62B08F0-8BB5-4674-BB38-4369762F5661

Tue Apr 12 10:33:52 2011
Machine-check capabilities (cpu 1) 0x0000000000000806:
family: 6 model: 15 stepping: 10 microcode: 146
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7500 @ 2.20GHz
6 error-reporting banks
threshold-based error status present
Machine-check status 0x0000000000000004:
machine-check in progress
MCA error-reporting registers:
IA32 MC0STATUS(0x401): 0xb200004000000800 valid
MCA error code: 0x0800
Model specific error code: 0x0000
Other information: 0x00000040
Threshold-based status: No tracking
Status bits:
Processor context corrupt
Error enabled
Uncorrected error
IA32 MC1STATUS(0x405): 0x0000000000000000 invalid
IA32 MC2STATUS(0x409): 0x0000000000000000 invalid
IA32 MC3STATUS(0x40d): 0x0020000000000000 invalid
IA32 MC4STATUS(0x411): 0x0000000000000011 invalid
IA32 MC5STATUS(0x415): 0xb200221010040400 valid
MCA error code: 0x0400
Model specific error code: 0x1004
Other information: 0x00002210
Threshold-based status: No tracking
Status bits:
Processor context corrupt
Error enabled
Uncorrected error
panic(cpu 1 caller 0x2a9d27): Machine Check at 0x0de3c4a5, thread:0xf4e23d4, trapno:0x12, err:0x0,registers:
CR0: 0x80010033, CR2: 0xb010300c, CR3: 0x00100000, CR4: 0x00000660
EAX: 0xb0d3bec8, EBX: 0x0de36d24, ECX: 0xb0d3becc, EDX: 0x0000fffe
ESP: 0xb0d3bac0, EBP: 0xb0d3bee8, ESI: 0x16222ab8, EDI: 0x00000000
EFL: 0x00010286, EIP: 0x0de3c4a5

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Answer 2

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Apr 11, 2011 6:45 AM in response to rainwolf

It sounds like you found a bug with Adobe's Flash. Alert them that you found a working version, so they can isolate the cause. There might be a situation where it overtaxes the memory or GPU, and there is an issue with one or the other. Run the hardware test that comes with the Mac on its original CDs. If you bought the machine second hand and don't have the CDs, contact the original owner for them.
Otherwise call AppleCare if you are missing the CDs:

http://www.apple.com/contact/phone_contacts.html

The hardware test directions are here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303081

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Answer 3

Apr 11, 2011 12:51 PM in response to rainwolf

Thanks to Klaus1 for the following:

The latest version of Adobe FlashPlayer can be obtained from here:

http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1ProdVersion=ShockwaveFlash

(You can check here: http://www.adobe.com/products/flash/about/ to see which version you should install for your Mac and OS.

* You should first uninstall any previous version of Flash Player, using the uninstaller from here (make sure you use the correct one!):*

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_14157

and also that you follow the instructions closely, such as closing ALL applications first before installing. _*You must also carry out a permission repair after installing anything from Adobe.*_

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Answer 4

a brody

Level 10

85,314 points

Apr 12, 2011 2:59 AM in response to rainwolf

That is generally a bad RAM or logicboard issue. Note all those invalid memory registers.

Message was edited by: a brody

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Answer 5

rainwolf Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 26, 2011 6:35 AM in response to rainwolf

I seem to have solve my issue and wrote it up here http://submanifolds.blogspot.com/2011/04/coolbook-on-macbook-pro-15-22-ghz.html

Long story short: I use coolbook, and my settings worked for all programs under heavy loads, but not for flash content, I think that switching cpu frequencies went a little too fast and the cpu voltage switching could not keep up, but this is just a guess. I solved it by increasing the voltages for the upper frequencies a bit and now my computer does not crash anymore when playing flash. The flash plugin does crash occasionally, but I consider this normal since I have never seen it crashing on its own without taking down the whole system with it.

I hope this helps (anybody).

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