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Flash plug-in crashed any application

post #1 of 24
10/13/08 at 8:46pm
Thread Starter 
Hello everyone. This is my last ditch effort before I take my Mac in to the actual genius bar. For a while now, the flash plug-in has crashed any application that tries to use it. Whether it be web browsers, or video players, any application cannot use the flash plug-in.

I literally have tried everything. I reinstalled flash, installed previous versions of flash, repaired disk permissions, and many more. Recently (like, today) I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.5, but chose the save everything option. When that didn't work, I used the erase everything, and start over option. But, still, flash crashes everything, even though I reinstalled Mac OS X with a clean slate.

Does anyone have any ideas? Obviously, I will try anything, so no suggestion is too extreme. Any help is appreciated.
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post #2 of 24
10/13/08 at 10:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

Obviously, I will try anything, so no suggestion is too extreme.

Even buying a pig and a wig, putting the pig in the wig, taking a picture and posting it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

Hello everyone. This is my last ditch effort before I take my Mac in to the actual genius bar. For a while now, the flash plug-in has crashed any application that tries to use it. Whether it be web browsers, or video players, any application cannot use the flash plug-in.

When you say it crashes these apps, does it crash them as soon as they open, at random or as soon as Flash content needs to be played?

Do you have a crash log? When the app crashes, click report and it will show a log. The part around Thread 0 is usually the most important part.

Do you have any other browser plugins that may conflict with Flash such as another decoder? Check out your Quicktime libraries and look for 3rd party codecs:

/Library/Quicktime
/Users/<name>/Library/Quicktime
/Library/Internet Plugins
/Users/<name>/Library/Internet Plugins

Which specific browsers and players have been crashing?
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post #3 of 24
10/14/08 at 2:31am
If it is the lastest flash player plugin it screws permission quite badly. I suggest repairing the permissions first as it stopped the crashes for me thus far.
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post #4 of 24
10/14/08 at 7:21am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Even buying a pig and a wig, putting the pig in the wig, taking a picture and posting it?

Maybe not that extreme.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

When you say it crashes these apps, does it crash them as soon as they open, at random or as soon as Flash content needs to be played?

Any application opens fine, but as soon as it uses flash, it crashes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Do you have a crash log? When the app crashes, click report and it will show a log. The part around Thread 0 is usually the most important part.

At thread 0 it says (in Safari):
Thread 0 Crashed:
0 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin\t0x1776053c 0x173de000 + 3679548
And continues saying that for about 10 lines. I am not sure if this is what you are talking about though.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Do you have any other browser plugins that may conflict with Flash such as another decoder? Check out your Quicktime libraries and look for 3rd party codecs:
/Library/Quicktime

Just the AppleIntermediateCodec.component.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

/Users/<name>/Library/Quicktime

There is no quicktime folder here...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

/Library/Internet Plugins

There are no .component files in this folder, but there are many items here:
Flash Player.plugin
flashplayer.xpt
IPhotoPhotocast.plugin
JavaPluginCocoa.bundle
NP-PPC-Dir-Shocwave (with no extention)
nslQTScriptablePlugin.xpt
QuartzComposer.webplugin
QuicktimePlugin.plugin
QuicktimePlugin.webplugin
VerifiedDownloadPlugin.plugin
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

/Users/<name>/Library/Internet Plugins

Nothing in this folder.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Which specific browsers and players have been crashing?

I have tried it in every browser I have, Safari, Firefox, and Camino. The only application that I remember crashing is Jing, which is a recording app when it tried to play back the video it said something about how it was caused by the flash plug-in.

Thanks for all the help by the way.
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post #5 of 24
10/14/08 at 7:22am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by rob05au View Post

If it is the lastest flash player plugin it screws permission quite badly. I suggest repairing the permissions first as it stopped the crashes for me thus far.

I am not sure exactly how to do this, but I am up for trying if you, or someone could explain how.
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post #6 of 24
10/14/08 at 9:46am
Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

I am not sure exactly how to do this, but I am up for trying if you, or someone could explain how.

It's the same repair disk permissions you mentioned in the first post. If you do a get info on the internet plugins folder and the flash plugins themselves, it will show you at the bottom what the permissions are. You may have to manually adjust them.

The folder and files should be:
owner: system - read/write
group: <user name> - read/write
other: read only

It could perhaps be that your flash plugin executable has lost its execute permissions. This sometimes happens to apps. To repair this, you would right-click Flash_Player.plugin show package contents. Go to Contents > MacOS. Open a terminal and type chmod 755 and then drag in the Flash Player file in that folder. It should read:

chmod 755 /Library/Internet\\ Plug-Ins/Flash\\ Player.plugin/Contents/MacOS/Flash\\ Player

Hit return. Then try using flash again.

You should probably have Safari closed while doing this stuff and then open it up again after you are done.
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post #7 of 24
10/14/08 at 2:34pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

It's the same repair disk permissions you mentioned in the first post. If you do a get info on the internet plugins folder and the flash plugins themselves, it will show you at the bottom what the permissions are. You may have to manually adjust them.

The folder and files should be:
owner: system - read/write
group: <user name> - read/write
other: read only

It could perhaps be that your flash plugin executable has lost its execute permissions. This sometimes happens to apps. To repair this, you would right-click Flash_Player.plugin show package contents. Go to Contents > MacOS. Open a terminal and type chmod 755 and then drag in the Flash Player file in that folder. It should read:

chmod 755 /Library/Internet\\ Plug-Ins/Flash\\ Player.plugin/Contents/MacOS/Flash\\ Player

Hit return. Then try using flash again.

You should probably have Safari closed while doing this stuff and then open it up again after you are done.

Thanks for the info.
I checked the permissions for the flash plugins, and they are all how they should be.

I also did the terminal part, and it still crashes.

Thank you very much for your help though, it gives me hope
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post #8 of 24
10/15/08 at 10:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

Thanks for the info.
I checked the permissions for the flash plugins, and they are all how they should be.

I also did the terminal part, and it still crashes.

Thank you very much for your help though, it gives me hope

Flash also has a temporary cache in /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems

If it can't write to this folder, it may crash the app using it. You can use the Finder Go menu > Go To Folder to open this invisible folder or in terminal type:

open /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems

This folder should be owned by your username and have read/write permissions.

Another thing you can check is your console log. /Applications/Utilities/Console. If you pull the tab on the left, it opens a list of logs. console.log is the standard error output destination. The crashreporter logs are where the crash reports are stored per app.

Check if anything goes into console.log when the crash happens.
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post #9 of 24
10/15/08 at 9:10pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Flash also has a temporary cache in /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems

If it can't write to this folder, it may crash the app using it. You can use the Finder Go menu > Go To Folder to open this invisible folder or in terminal type:

open /private/var/tmp/folders.501/TemporaryItems

This folder should be owned by your username and have read/write permissions.

Another thing you can check is your console log. /Applications/Utilities/Console. If you pull the tab on the left, it opens a list of logs. console.log is the standard error output destination. The crashreporter logs are where the crash reports are stored per app.

Check if anything goes into console.log when the crash happens.

Hi again. Thank you very much for all of your help.

I tried finding the folder you mentioned using both techniques, but I could not find it.

Here is the error that Firefox produces in the Console:

10/15/08 9:07:55 PM com.apple.launchd[64] ([0x0-0x56056].org.mozilla.firefox[485]) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 488 PPID 1 crashreporter
10/15/08 9:07:55 PM com.apple.launchd[64] ([0x0-0x56056].org.mozilla.firefox[485]) Exited with exit code: 1

Safari:

10/15/08 9:08:11 PM com.apple.launchd[64] ([0x0-0x59059].com.apple.Safari[489]) Exited abnormally: Bus error

Again, thank you for all your help with this problem.
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post #10 of 24
10/16/08 at 10:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

I tried finding the folder you mentioned using both techniques, but I could not find it.

Your user may be different from 501. That's usually the first admin created.

Try to open /private/var/tmp and have a look to see what's inside it. If there's no folder called folders.501, folders.502, you may need to create one with you as owner and with read/write permissions.

There should be one there and it should have a folder called TemporaryItems inside it. If you do see this folder, when you try to load a flash video, it should try create a temp file in this folder.
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post #11 of 24
10/16/08 at 11:36am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Your user may be different from 501. That's usually the first admin created.

Try to open /private/var/tmp and have a look to see what's inside it. If there's no folder called folders.501, folders.502, you may need to create one with you as owner and with read/write permissions.

There should be one there and it should have a folder called TemporaryItems inside it. If you do see this folder, when you try to load a flash video, it should try create a temp file in this folder.

Ok, I went to /private/var/tmp and inside there was:

afpserver_0
krb5kdc_rrcache
launchd (folder)
mds (folder)


Update
The launchd folder does not allow me inside it, and inside the mds folder there is:

501 (folder)
messages (folder)
system (folder)

I tried to create a folder called folders.501, but it didn't help.

Thanks.
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post #12 of 24
10/16/08 at 12:35pm
Thread Starter 
I guess Adobe released flash player 10 or something recently. I installed it, and it still crashes...

I also tried installing previous versions of the flash player. Up to flash player 8, none crashed, but none were able to play anything. The previous versions of flash player 9 crashed though.
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post #13 of 24
10/16/08 at 2:06pm
It looks like Flash uses a different location in Leopard. Try /private/var/folders/. Check for folders that might have TemporaryItems inside it.
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post #14 of 24
10/16/08 at 5:35pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

It looks like Flash uses a different location in Leopard. Try /private/var/folders/. Check for folders that might have TemporaryItems inside it.

Hey, thank you for all of your help. I have decided to just take in my mac to the apple store. If I understand what they tell me is wrong, I will try to tell you. Thanks again
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post #15 of 24
10/17/08 at 8:38pm
Thread Starter 
Hello everyone. I took my mac into the Apple store, and they said it was a weird case. They basically had to erase everything on the hard drive using the replace with 0's method. Then, after they installed Mac OS X 10.5 again, everything is working perfectly
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post #16 of 24
10/18/08 at 7:07am
Quote:
Originally Posted by piginawig View Post

Hello everyone. I took my mac into the Apple store, and they said it was a weird case. They basically had to erase everything on the hard drive using the replace with 0's method. Then, after they installed Mac OS X 10.5 again, everything is working perfectly

Perhaps it was due to corrupted sectors on the drive. Zeroing the drive ignores those corrupted sectors. The original reinstall shouldn't have tried to use the same parts of the drive though. Definitely odd but it's good to hear that it's working properly.
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post #17 of 24
10/19/08 at 6:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

Perhaps it was due to corrupted sectors on the drive. Zeroing the drive ignores those corrupted sectors. The original reinstall shouldn't have tried to use the same parts of the drive though. Definitely odd but it's good to hear that it's working properly.

I've had this same problem for over a month. When it first happened, I spent 2 hours on the phone with Apple. They couldn't do anything. Went to Apple Care last week and thought it was fixed. Came home and boom, same issue. Of course, we moved over my files while I was still at the store, but these are just email, photos and music. They said it shouldn't be an issue b/c I wasn't bringing over any aps.

I'm about to do another erase and reinstall. I take a lot of photos and don't want to lose those, nor all my songs I've downloaded. I have no idea why this even started happening. Applecare said it may have been an issue that happened when I was downloading something, as if I downloaded too much at one time? No clue. Seems odd. And no one can seem to fix it.
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post #18 of 24
10/20/08 at 1:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by greenm View Post

Applecare said it may have been an issue that happened when I was downloading something, as if I downloaded too much at one time? No clue. Seems odd. And no one can seem to fix it.

That sounds like a typical tech support answer. Tech support is like modern art sometimes. If you give a suitably vague answer, people will mould it into something meaningful and still assume you know what you're talking about. That's what I do anyway.

I suppose they could have meant that a Flash movie being written to the cache in a bad way might have corrupted the drive space at that location preventing future movies being written to that cache.
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post #19 of 24
10/20/08 at 2:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

That sounds like a typical tech support answer. Tech support is like modern art sometimes. If you give a suitably vague answer, people will mould it into something meaningful and still assume you know what you're talking about. That's what I do anyway.

I suppose they could have meant that a Flash movie being written to the cache in a bad way might have corrupted the drive space at that location preventing future movies being written to that cache.

I reinstalled OSX again last night, backed up everything and reinstalled using the erase option. Instead of bringing everything over before I tried Safari as soon as I turned it back on. AND CRASHED. I've installed the updates, don't know if it has something to do with the OSX updates, but don't think it will matter (I'm at work now). So installing OSX installed the plugin, I guess.

I just have no idea how this could be such a problem. I know my way well enough around a computer and can do basic maintenance, but this has gotten ridiculous. I wonder if I could repair the threads myself that are supposedly busted? Just no idea how to get in (going off the error log thingey in disk permissions, not as if 'repair disk permissions' actually works).

I just bought this Macbook Pro in late January. I like it. I just can't believe a stupid plug-in issue is this huge a deal.
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post #20 of 24
10/21/08 at 12:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by greenm View Post

I reinstalled OSX again last night, backed up everything and reinstalled using the erase option. Instead of bringing everything over before I tried Safari as soon as I turned it back on. AND CRASHED. I've installed the updates, don't know if it has something to do with the OSX updates, but don't think it will matter (I'm at work now). So installing OSX installed the plugin, I guess.

To do the same erase that worked for the OP, you'd boot from the install CD and open Disk Utility. Then erase the drive that way but under the erase options, you'd choose to zero the drive - don't choose multiple passes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by greenm View Post

I just have no idea how this could be such a problem. I know my way well enough around a computer and can do basic maintenance, but this has gotten ridiculous.

Yeah, it seems really odd that it would happen to two people. It seems like a pretty rare occurrence. The Flash plugin must be at fault somewhere along the line. Adobe stuff has been known in the past to screw with hard drives - their CS2 installer had a big drive-related problem.
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post #21 of 24
10/21/08 at 8:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Marvin View Post

To do the same erase that worked for the OP, you'd boot from the install CD and open Disk Utility. Then erase the drive that way but under the erase options, you'd choose to zero the drive - don't choose multiple passes.

Yeah, it seems really odd that it would happen to two people. It seems like a pretty rare occurrence. The Flash plugin must be at fault somewhere along the line. Adobe stuff has been known in the past to screw with hard drives - their CS2 installer had a big drive-related problem.

I've found other forums where people have had this problem, but people seem to fix it or then the threads just kind of die...some people just operate without using the plugin. I was doing that for awhile, but I can't handle it anymore.

Ok. So don't do multiple passes? And make sure the plugin is deleted. I'm worried I'm doing this wrong. I don't know if I am doing this right when booting from the OSX disc. I now cannot even update Safari, even though I updated to the latest OS X. I'm worried everything is just frakked.

I asked my buddy at Adobe who is one of the Flash QA gurus about it, but he just tells me how sick CS4 is going to be. Love the guy like a brother, but his narcissism is not helping me right now!
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post #22 of 24
10/22/08 at 1:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by greenm View Post

Ok. So don't do multiple passes? And make sure the plugin is deleted. I'm worried I'm doing this wrong. I don't know if I am doing this right when booting from the OSX disc. I now cannot even update Safari, even though I updated to the latest OS X. I'm worried everything is just frakked.

If you can get hold of a cheap external drive, this is an easy way to test if it will work ok without doing any damage. Clone your internal onto it (using superduper or carbon copy cloner) and boot from it holding alt. If the problem is due to a drive corruption, Flash should work ok on the external. If so, you can actually erase the internal drive from the external with zeroes and clone back again.
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post #23 of 24
10/22/08 at 2:25am
It sounds very much like you Internal HD has some bad issues with bad sectors or probably in the process of dying which can cause strange issues as I have seen a few times in the past.

I agree the external drive will give a clear idea if it works without crashes I suggest getting the interal HD replaced for added safety of your files.

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post #24 of 24
2/12/09 at 9:32am
I ran into this problem today and discovered this thread. I discovered that the Hard Drive was named "Macintosh HD________" - with a bunch of spaces or other invisible characters at the end (I have to use underscores so they show up here). The finder didn't display them at all, but I noticed the Hard Drive name displayed weird in the Flash installer. It was reserving space for them and that pushed a quote and period to the next line. Once I removed the characters from the Hard Drive name (made it "Macintosh HD"), that fixed the problem.
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