Many users of the Google Chrome web browser report problems with the Adobe Flash Player plugin – the problem has continued from Chrome 10 through to the current Chrome 19.
UPDATED 18th May 2012 – updated example picture and text to include the experimental PepperFlash plugin.
What Is The Problem?
When trying to browse a Flash-based website e.g. Facebook games, YouTube or use tools like Google Mail (which also rely on Flash), the Flash plugin crashes with a message saying: “The following plugin has crashed: Shockwave Flash“.
What Does That Mean?
Ignore the reference to Shockwave – the error message ‘the following plugin has crashed: Shockwave Flash’ means that the Adobe Flash Player plugin has crashed – it has nothing to do with Adobe Shockwave Player which is a separate program.
What Causes The Crashes?
As I noted recently in updating Adobe Flash, Google Chrome already includes an integrated version of Flash Player which is automatically updated by Chrome – there is normally no need to download the standalone version of Flash Player which is intended for non-IE users (primarily Firefox).
However, if Firefox or a similar web browser is (or has ever been) installed on your computer, then you have likely also installed the standalone version of Flash for Firefox and other web browsers – and this would include Chrome.
Therefore Chrome tries to use two versions of Flash Player – its own version built into Chrome and the standalone Adobe version you installed for Firefox/others. Having both versions active often causes ‘the following plugin has crashed: Shockwave Flash’ error message because they may conflict with each other.
Note: just to make things slightly more confusing, Chrome 19 also reintroduced the experimental PepperFlash plugin – this is still under testing and should be left disabled.
How To Fix It
- Open Chrome
- Type about:plugins into the website address bar at the top and press the ENTER key to display Chrome’s Plugins page
- Look down the list of Plugins for ‘Flash’ – if it says ‘Flash (3 files)’ you do have both versions of Flash installed (and PepperFlash) – this may cause Chrome to crash when accessing Flash-based websites
- Click on the ‘+ Details’ link at the top right of the Plugins page to expand the list of all Plugins
- Scroll down the list to find the Flash plugins – you should now see the full details of the Flash plugins which may display three versions of Flash as in the example below:
Flash Plugins (including the disabled Pepperflash)
- Look at the ‘Location:’ of each version – the integrated Chrome version is in (…Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application etc) and the standalone Adobe (formerly Macromedia) version is in the …Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash etc directory.
- Click on ‘Disable’ just under the Location of the Chrome version to disable it (and it will become greyed out)
- Ensure that the standalone Adobe version is enabled – if it is disabled (greyed out) click the ‘Enable’ link just under its Location to enable it) then close the Plugins tab
- Download and save to your computer the latest Adobe standalone version of Flash from Filehippo here (this is the non-IE version)
- Close Chrome and then install the newest standalone version of Flash you just downloaded. The recent Flash 11.2 version offers the option of automatic silent updates – recommended to keep it up to date automatically in future (see here for details)
- Finally, start Chrome and visit the Adobe Flash Player test page to check that Flash is now properly installed and working ok
Tip: From version 11.2, Flash offers automatic updating so it can update itself on a regular basis – however, it is still worth installing Filehippo’s Update Checker to automatically check for new updates as it can check for updates to many other common free programs e.g. Adobe Reader, QuickTime etc.
Other Tips – Updated 18th May 2012
From readers’ comments, the above fix has worked for most but there are many different reasons for Flash crashing in Chrome so, if it doesn’t work for you, here are some further tips that may help:
1. If you only have 1 Flash plugin (or 2, including the disabled Pepperflash) it must be the integrated Chrome one. Download the latest Adobe non-IE standalone version of Flash from Filehippo here then close Chrome and install that downloaded Flash program. Then just follow the steps in the ‘How To Fix It’ section above – effectively you will be switching off Chrome’s Flash and utilizing Adobe’s Flash instead – hopefully that will resolve the problem.
2. Try the ‘How To Fix It’ steps again but the other way round i.e. this time Enable the integrated Chrome Flash and Disable the Adobe standalone version – then test to see if Flash no longer crashes.
3. See if Flash works ok in Incognito mode (click the Wrench/spanner in menu bar and choose ‘New Incognito Window’ to start Incognito Mode). Incognito mode disables all Chrome Extensions – if Flash now works without crashing then one of your Extensions must be causing the problem so, once back in normal Chrome mode, disable your extensions one at a time and test Flash until it stops crashing. The last extension disabled is the one causing the problem – leave it disabled and enable the others again.
4. Disable all Plugins except Flash. If Flash now works without crashing then one of your Plugins must be causing the problem – enable your Plugins one at a time and test Flash until it starts crashing again. The last Plugin enabled is the one causing the problem – disable it and enable the others again.
5. Update yours graphics card drivers (especially if they are old). Driver updates are often released to fix an issue with how Windows or individual programs work with a piece of hardware (e.g. graphics card) or to enable new features for it.
6. Disable Flash hardware acceleration to eliminate hardware or driver compatibility problems with Flash Player – untick ‘Enable Hardware Acceleration’ in the Flash Display panel. To view the Display panel, right click the picture (application image) during playback of a Flash video and, from the context menu, select ‘Settings’. The Display panel is the first panel (tab) shown at the bottom of the Settings window.
7. The nuclear option. Test Flash on another browser such as IE or Firefox – if it doesn’t crash there and all the above steps failed then your version of Chrome may be corrupt. The last resort is to uninstall Chrome and ensure you clear the browsing data during uninstall. Then, reinstall the latest stable version (currently Chrome 19) and the problem will hopefully be fixed. Remember to backup all your bookmarks/passwords etc BEFORE you uninstall – you could also sign into your Google account and sync settings for use later.
From comments received, the above fixes have worked for the majority of people. If you do still have problems with some sites (especially Facebook games), you may have to wait for a specific fix from Google. In the meantime you could use a different browser like Firefox or IE if necessary.
Related posts:
Thank you very much for this info. I have been getting Shockwave Flash Plugin crash messages when access Zynga games on Facebook, which are related to an advert displayed on the game page, not the game itself. In my case it was not due to two versions of Adobe Shockwave Flash, but to the Real Player plugin (v15.0.0.198) . Real Player adds a tab to allow you to download web page content. The adverts on Zynga don’t seem to like that. Since I like Real Player, I’m just living with the crashes, but I thought I pass the info about the Real Player conflict for others.
Hi Sally, thanks for the heads up. Badly written/tested plugins and extensions can cause this error so I added the extra tips last month to help cases like yours where the problem wasn’t in fact caused by 2 conflicting versions of Flash.
You could just disable the Real Player plugin whilst you play games if you don’t want to uninstall it completely.
I am, apparently, having the same sort of issue. Yet, when I go the plugins page, I do not have a Real Player plugin installed. This is concerting as I thought here is my issue. The main fix has helped to some extent. But it is still happening (not as quickly or even every time as before). I guess I will have to figure out which other plugin (if in fact it is another plugin) could be causing it. But thanks for the heads up, I am hoping it gets me in the right direction.
XP Pro Servicepace 3, Chrome:
Ok folks, I just spent approximately six hours trying every fix (including the nuclear option) in the list in the first response at the top of this page. Despite the author’s very knowledgeable suggestions and several hours of exploring other possibilities that came up in a Google search, nothing cleared up the issue of error messages or halts every time I tried to play a YouTube video. I was about to pack in all in and resign myself to using FireFox or (yecch) IE to watch YouTube when I noticed that the ‘enable/disable’ options on the Chrome plugin page were behaving strangely: Chrome was automatically disabling either the Adobe Acrobat or the Chrome PDF Viewer plugin, meaning that one appeared to negate the other. Since I figured that Acrobat was more essential to the YouTube viewing environment, I chose to disable the Chrome PDF Viewer plugin. I closed Chrome and restarted it and the problem seems to be solved. In a word or two, open your Chrome plugin page and disable the PDF viewer plugin. Everything else – depending on what you have in there – can be left enabled – including both (as illustrated in the main post) the “integrated Chrome version… and…the standalone Adobe (formerly Macromedia) version which is in the …Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash etc directory.”
I hope that this will work for others and save someone the six+ hours I’ve just spent trying to resolve the issue
jk,
Paris France
No, Flash Player has nothing to do with Adobe Acrobat or Chrome PDF Viewer – so if your crashes are fixed it must be due to you reinstalling Chrome or not reinstalling a faulty plugin…
PDF viewers are not used by youtube etc for videos, only for PDF files. The ‘strange’ disabling behaviour is actually normal – you can’t have both these PDF plugins enabled in Chrome at the same time.
If you do try enabling both then Chrome will just disable one of them automatically the next time you start Chrome. This makes sense as otherwise it wouldn’t know which one to use when you try to open a PDF file…
I can’t believe so few people are having trouble with this. I’ve been suffering this problem for almost three months. I was glad to find this page, however, so far, nothing is working. I note that when I disable something, there is no SAVE button anywhere. When I close Chrome and come back in I find that everything is enabled again even though I had asked to disable it. Still a big mystery to me.
Hi Don, don’t worry you’re not alone – perhaps you missed the 37 comments available from the ‘older comments’ link – and this is the second most visited article on the whole site so it is a serious issue.
Chrome doesn’t use a Save button on options or plugins pages but it does (normally) remember and keep your settings unless they create a conflict (e.g. like the PDF viewers in comment 2 above). If you disable a flash plugin it should stay disabled though.
Hi Roy, has ANYONE actually solved this mess? Doesn’t Google want to fix this?
It is really something that they could create something so wonderful, get us REALLY hooked on it and then just let it drop in the garbage.
Yes, it is A SERIOUS PROBLEM, but to whom? Are we such a drop in the bucket of users that they could care less? I know I’m set up to send them a crash report every time and I would think I have bombed them out of existence with it. BUT I’ve never heard a peep from anyone Google-wise. :/
Don
Has been occurring for a couple of years now – with every new Chrome version, Google support ask people to provide crash reports for this exact issue…
However, most Flash crashes are resolved by the first solution in the article and the rest by the Other Tips – I’ve not heard of anyone following ALL those steps and still having no joy
UPDATED 18th Dec – user since confirmed he had similar problems in IE/Firefox and other issues also – it was not a Chrome problem in this case.
hey thanks so much! i’ve had this problem for a while but now it works!
thanks a lot, these tips have really helped me! i just hope it don’t start again.
I was also having many issues of Chrome crashing. I removed a recently installed spyware software (SuperAntiSpyware) and my crashing seems to be resolved (for the moment).
[Hallelujah Chorus] HALLELUJAH! I was just about to do a factory reset, and you can imagine how difficult that would be knowing that ALL of my software is literally on the other side of the globe.
I used a utility that is also my anti-virus application for tuning my pc for cleaning and restoring tools, preventative tools, and diagnostic tools. I selected all of everything they had and ran it knowing I couldn’t be in any worse shape than I was already. VOILA! Everything started working immediately.
So, if anyone goes through all that you have suggested, I can certainly recommend Quick Heal Total Security.
Thanks to you, Roy for all your help. I’m surely glad your page is here.
Don Wood
As problem was in IE/FF too, must have been a general Windows/registry/temp file issue which your AV has fixed. Great!
Well, that was all rather short lived. There was great improvement, but it didn’t last. As the good thing started losing out, I bought RadarSync PC Updater, and got even better improvement. Then in only a couple of days things started deteriorating again. Today, Chrome is basically dead. I can’t even get to type in chrome: plugins. It just freezes.
I wish there were some way to manually send a crash notice to Google so they can figure out what is doing thie with an otherwise wonderful browser. I even removed FireFox which seemed to help and then didn’t, so go figure. I am REALLY sick of this. It makes me think I need a new computer. :/
The problem is fixed! However, it took a factory reset of my cornputer to get it fixed. WHAT a nightmare this has been and will continue to be until I get everything back and set up. I just had a look at about:plugins and can see the problem FLASH is disabled right now. However, I found another very interesting phenomena and wonder what you think of it:
Even though this is a factory reset machine and I only have two programs on it, Logos and OpenOffice I did a scan with one of those registry devices and it found 1,700+ problems it needs to “fix.” I said, “No way, Jose,” and removed it from my registry. In my estimation, it’s nothing more than a come on to get you to buy their worthless (or near worthless) cleaner registry “fixer.” It appears the only thing that’s getting “fixed” is their pocketbook.
Don
Oh, and one more thing. I only have I.E. and Chrome loaded. I will not load FireFox.
Paid registry cleaners are the modern equivalent of snake oil imho – see my article http://techlogon.com/2011/04/01/do-i-need-a-registry-cleaner/
Only one I would use is Ccleaner (free) and even then, only if there is a very specific need – on a new factory restored install there should be no need at all…
5 star help! I can listen to LMRadio at last! Thanks.
Here’s a question – what if my “something flash” has crashed so far that I can’t even do step 1 (“Type about:plugins into the website address bar at the top and press the ENTER key to display Chrome’s Plugins page”)? All I can get is a white page and “chrome://plugins/” into the adress bar (it changes automatically) – nothing else. Any solutions for that?
It’s OK, relaunching helped.
Awesome! This was my problem and thanks for posting to article to help assist others.
So, what happens when a new version of Chrome is installed by About Google Chrome – does the internal flash end up enabled again?
It is nice that one can disable the internal flash, since sometimes there is a delay between updated flash players and a new Chrome release. If you start seeing warnings or errors about needing a new flash player, be sure to remember to disable that Chrome internal flash player before attempting to upgrade.
The internal flash (and any other disabled plugins) shouldn’t be re-enabled by a Chrome upgrade, at least in Chrome versions tested to date.
However this behavior could of course change in some future Chrome upgrade version so, if flash problems return immediately after upgrading in future, the flash plugins should be the first thing to check – make sure they are still enabled/disabled as before (change them back if required).
been having issues for last year plus, reloaded flash only to have same issues, crash, and now memory issues thanks to adobe storage, which is on a different sight. 10.3 adobe has sercurity issues and so on. You would think after 2 years they would fix it, but they say its a 3rd party flash. reports on web Cnet and in PC Magazine, so they are fully aware of issues for 2 years.
Part of the problem is that there are multiple causes affecting different people – but yes, Google have been constantly made aware by users of these problems for 2 years and Google brought it on themselves by embedding Flash into Chrome instead of using Adobe’s external plugin which has no such widespread problems on other browsers like Firefox etc
Great… It appeared to be working, right up to the point where I re-opened Chrome after the install of the most current flash from Adobe…. The first thing upon re-opening Chrome was the familiar CRASH…
Soooo…. thanks for the attempted fix… It just isn’t working for me…
Sorry to hear that Jim. Unfortunately there are many possible reasons for shockwave flash crashes in Chrome so no single solution works for everyone.
Did you try all the ‘Other Tips’ section i.e. confirm it works ok on FF but crashes even after reinstalling Chrome? I’ve yet to hear of anyone who still had problems after going through all those steps (they do take some time to test out fully).
But if you have tried them all then sadly I’ve run out of suggestions except of course using FF/IE for flash heavy sites
This has been going on for a couple of years now. Plus, as indicated, this is a well visited site. So the problem is bigger than we think. So in my mind that leaves three possibilities:
1). Both Adobe and Google (and Mozilla also) have laid off so many engineers that they don’t have the time or the personnel to fix this, or; 2) The less expensive Indian/Chinese engineers that replaced the laid-off engineers are not experienced enough to solve this problem, or; 3) Steve Jobs was right and Flash is simply outdated and clunky and not a good standard for use on the internet, and companies should switch to html5….
Just joking Roy….
Adobe are giving up on Flash development for mobile devices so in a sense Apple did win – though it’s a pyrrhic victory as it leaves iOS users unable to view some web content.
HTML5 may accelerate the demise of Flash on desktops but could take a few years as Flash is so prevalent.
Another alternative, Microsoft’s Silverlight, is on the rise now too e.g. Lovefilm’s streaming movie service is moving from Flash to Silverlight. However, Apple block Silverlight from iOS too so iPad/iPhone users will be left out in the cold again…
WOW!!!! This rocks!!! Solved it like magic!!! I’ve had this problem for about 2 months now, was wondering why my quad core was crashing… finally solved, laptop speed so fast again
Glad it helped you and welcome to TechLogon!
Thanks a lot! This was really helpful. I had two versions active
and now the problem is solved.
this website is very helpful!! it worked quick and fine!! iv’e been on he computer over 4 hours just trying to find a solution to this problem and i just couldn’t!! until a couple of people recommended me this website and told me it was very good i got convinced and i tried it, it was so quick and easy!! i loved it!!!
Thanks for the kind words Naveah and hope you enjoy the rest of the site
After countless hours of trying to fix this I think I found the solution. In Task Manager I’ve changed the priority of chrome.exe to High. The browser froze for a couple of seconds but then the site actually loaded (webkinz.com for my little sister) when before the CPU activity was at 100% and then the plugins crashed.
Thanks a lot!
Not sure why that would work for you unless your CPU is very old/underpowered (even then it seems odd as it should have got there in the end) but glad if it did!
I have tried these steps and it just keeps crashing. It was fine yesterday and it started to crash at night until the next day today. Very frustrating, is there a quick fix for this? Something that doesn’t require trying over and over again?
If there was a single quick fix that always worked for everyone Google would have fixed it years ago
The fixes I have listed have worked for most people but it can take some time retesting to see if your problem is cured – easiest done if you can find a Flash-heavy site that always crashes.
If you don’t have time then consider a different browser e.g. Firefox/Opera/IE – they don’t seem to suffer the same Flash problems as Chrome.
ok I have tried everything but the full reboot of goggle, I shut all of the plug-in’s off and it still crashed, I got the new flash and still did. I don’t know what’s wrong with it, I have been using chrome for like ever, and now I can not use most of my sites like Chatango due to the crashing. I’m close to getting firefox but a lot of my stuff is on goggle. so do you have any ideas?
Unfortunately there are many possible reasons for shockwave flash crashes in Chrome so no single solution works for everyone.
It would be worth installing Firefox (even if temporarily) to see if Flash works ok in that – if it doesn’t then your problem is a wider issue, not Chrome specific. If all else fails then you could report the issue to Chrome support forums in the hope Google resolve the problem – but it’s been years now…