Why does my entire system freeze when I watch YouTube after Lion install?

I too have had this problem. Doesn't matter what browser, full screen or not, and it happens randomly. I may just open a page in another tab and that other tab starts loading a flash ad.

Happens either waking from sleep, or a fresh restart (I just turned my computer on this morning and it happend) Java installed. Perian and Flip4Mac installed. Screen Sharing (and Back to my Mac) off. I typically have the Mail app open as a full screen app.

This is on a Mid 2010 Macbook Pro w/ Core i5, 8GB RAM, SSD and HDD (for storage), GeForce 330M.

Interesting things to note:

First the browser chokes. Then, as I have iStat Menu installed, I have a live view of my CPU cores. I can see that one core gets hit hard, it goes 100% immediately. Getting more detail though, shows me nothing that's using any more than 10 percent of my CPU, which is bizarre. I should be seeing something that says "evilWebProcess - 100%"

I try to force quit, which then causes the entire system to lock up. I can move my mouse around, but nothing is responsive. Only solution is a hard restart.

Same here.

New IMAC 27" upgraded to Lion and having freezes with Youtube/Safari/Flash and Itunes.

Sad to say I am experiencing this as well. I have the latest Flash updated in Chrome, and the computer will randomly freeze when I watch any Flash videos, and sometimes even when I watch Quicktime.

I am on a new 2011 base 21" iMac, and has happened to me multiple times since upgrading to Lion.

This is extremely disappointing. I thought things were supposed to "just work." Flash is so prominent on the internet, what is Apple's solution to this?

It's not just Flash videos. There have been similar problems viewing videos in iTunes (e.g., video podcasts) as well. In iTunes, unlike with Flash videos, the sound continues to work after everything else freezes.

The only place I haven't experienced this is with Netflix streaming (via Silverlight) in Chrome. Not that it's all that related to the discussion here, but I couldn't get Netflix streaming to work in the new Safari so I don't know if that combination is working well for others.

Edit to add: Now that I think about it, I haven't had any problems yet when viewing videos on Vimeo, either.

Same here, it has been with youtube videos , and I am unable to force quit. I called apple support yesterday and I wasn't able to get the problem resolved...

I have the same issue as Franmanster.. Apple will have to look into this problem soon since there are so many of the same issues..

I heard that you need to go into Get Info for iTunes in the Applications folder and select 32 bit mode to get videos to work. Quicktime is lagging behind!

It more then quicktime, it's most video playback in many apps, plugins, etc. It has something to do with hardware video decoding on the GPU in Lion and something about waking from sleep mode trips the bug so when you play a video (sometimes, not always) it freezes the machine, leaving only the mouse able to move.

I'm no expert and have no clue on how to troubleshoot this, but here is my experience with the freezing issue.

My MacBook Pro freezes when the screen saver goes off. The screen saver works fine, it's when getting back to normal processes when the MBP freezes. I can get it out of it but takes time, there is a process that is consuming 100% of the resources, so any clicks or user entry I do with through the mouse or keyboard takes quite sometime to get aknowledged/done by the MBP. I was able to look into the Activity monitor and noticed the Windowserver process taking 100% of the CPU, when trying to kill the process a warning saying that I will be taken to the log in window appeared. Killed it, got the log in window, logged as usual and found everything working as usual, the WindowServer process was in ~ 2 - 3% of the CPU. If the screensaver kicks back again and if trying to get it out of it then it freezes once more. It is pretty repeatible in my case, although haven't succeeded on finding a solution.

Just called apple tech support. They had me reset the parameter ram. Do it by shutting down the mac and then holding down the command+option+r+p buttons at start up until you here the start up tone 3 times in a row. Your parameter ram is reset. Computer seems to be working better now for me. We will see. Trying to crash youtube..Let me know if this works for anyone else...

The main discussion of this issue is actually going on here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194165?answerId=15729455022#15729455022

@Pbrunke, I've done the reset myself, and the problem still persists. Try to put the computer into full sleep mode, and then try playing Flash/YouTube/QT/etc. That's when the problem arises, after full sleep.

Negative, did not work. Still freezes....Shucks

My 2011 Imac is freezing too while watching videos! Only power down, reboot fixes the problem. Love the Lion OS, not loving the freezing!! Apple please fix.

27 in 2010 8gb i7, multiple freezes with qtime and vlc. did a clean install of Lion, seems to have fixed that , although unplugging older usb scanner caused freeze 2 xs since the reinstall but videos playing fine.

whne my vids froze i had a loud tapping sound , which makes me think it was audio related.

I have a 27" 2011 (i7) and have had the freezing issue twice since the Lion upgrade. Had the imac for about month with SL and no issues. Just froze about 10 minutes ago. I woke it from sleep, updated some podcast and apps in itunes (10.4) and was syncing my iphone4 when i tried to watch a video on youtube. the 1st videio played, tried to swtich to a new one and while trying to load that video, it froze. Same symptoms as everyone else descibes. Mouse pointer still moves, unable to click anything...keyboard also unresponsive. Can still hear other application noises (friends loging in and out of ichat for example) only a hard restrart fixes. I hope this gets fixed soon. quite annoying