Help? Flash crashing every time ... | Hacker News Reader

Help? Flash crashing every time ...

Anyone help? For reasons I won't go into I have a Windows XP laptop. The latest update has just been applied, and now Flash won't run.

Any suggestions before I finally give up on Windows and just buy a Mac?

ADDED IN EDIT: Yes, I've tried all the forums I know of and no, they haven't helped. Yes, I've looked up all the sites I canthink of that might be useful and no, they haven't helped. Yes, I've tried Googling for the problem and no, nothing seemed to help. Yes, I have tried to solve this myself (for over 6 hours) and no, I don't seem to have managed. For reference, I'm not a system admin type person.

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Having spent far more of my time fixing Windows problems than I really wish to recall :-/, what I've found to work most reliably in practice is to wipe the harddisk and reinstall the operating system.

On the one hand, this will take a day of work (either of your time, or, if you don't have the expertise to do it yourself, of someone you pay to do it). On the other hand, you'll usually end up with a working computer; and the process is usually merely tedious.

On the third hand, naturally you may find a less drastic solution to this particular problem; on the fourth hand, it might take you as long or longer to find that fix than to do the full reinstall.

I don't know enough about Macs to give advice as to whether that would be a better solution for you.

Thanks for the comments. I find it vaguely offensive that a complete re-install of Windows is so commonly recommended, but it does seem to be the prevailing wisdom.

So far I've gone to chrome://plugins and disabled the Flash plugin, then re-enabled it, and now it seems to work.

Mostly.

I'm on Win XP (nothing to be ashamed of :), and Flash works fine for me. Seems likely the problem is something else.

Wow! Hacker News is a PC support forum now! I didn't know...

Thanks for your reply - I didn't understand. I do now.

I won't bother to ask questions about technical matters here again, nor to ask if people I respect are having the same problems, nor to try to raise awareness of possible issues with the technology that many of us use every day.

Nor will I talk about questions of how to investigate whether recent Windows updates have code specifically to destabilise Chrome, or other things that I would've thought of interest to the HN community.

No, instead I'll watch the countless discussions of whether it's the idea or the execution, more discussion of whether it's better to go to school/college/university or to go straight into business, or yet another submission of some other much loved favorite.

Never mind that I've tried several technical forums and they are all bloody useless. Never mind that this was, I thought, somewhere that people with similar interests occasionally helped each other.

I'll go away now.

> No, instead I'll watch the countless discussions of whether it's the idea or the execution, more discussion of whether it's better to go to school/college/university or to go straight into business, or yet another submission of a much loved favorite.

Have you read the FAQ[1]? "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something." (Ask and Tell HN posts where people showcase their projects and startups are part of its culture, however.)

HN was originally "Startup News", and a lot of its content is related to startups and entrepreneurialism, but with a hacker flair.

> Nor will I talk about my investigations of whether recent Windows updates have code specifically to destabilise Chrome, or other things that I would've thought of interest to the HN community.

It would have been interesting to read your ideas on this in a blog post. (The site is Hacker News.)

Regarding your question, put more effort in asking and people will put more effort in answering.[2]

> Never mind that I've tried several technical forums and they are all bloody useless.

Have you tried SuperUser[3]?

[1] http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#beprecise [3] http://superuser.com/

Oddly enough if you look at my posting history you'll discover that I know the guidelines. Specifically, the bit you quote:

    Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something
    (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to
    ask or complain about moderation) ...

... is talking about not posting to the group questions that are intended for YC or for PG - the "us" in the above excerpt. "Ask" and "Tell" are not part of the culture, they are independent of this.

Moving on ...

My investigations haven't got very far, not least because I've been struggling for the past 6 hours to make my machine usable again. I've given up. I'll just do without flash until someone can tell me how to fix it. The forums I've checked haven't helped at all, although I didn't know of SuperUser. I'll try that tomorrow.

And regarding ESR's recommendations, again, oddly enough I've suggested in the past that people read them, and I had them in mind when I posted, but I am seriously beyond caring. I had hoped someone would (a) recognise the problem,and (b) cut me a little slack.

I guess I was wrong. Pursuant to your observation, I've edited my original submission to give some indication that I have expended at least a little effort already in trying to solve this.

ADDED IN EDIT: The question appears to have been asked in SuperUser and has had no replies. Based on other searches in other forums I'm not surprised, but I'll make more searches tomorrow.

Have you tried using Chrome, with its embedded version of Flash (check chrome://plugins to enable only the embedded one)? If that doesn't work either, it sounds like there's a bust configuration somewhere, rather than a problem with the installation as such. Another thing to try: log in with another OS user account, and see if it works there. Finally: what's the failure mode, exactly? Browsers pretend no flash is installed? Flash hangs on start, etc.?

Thanks for that - useful. I'll have a look at using the embedded version. Currently Chrome comes up with the bar across the top saying something like "the following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash" (or something - I don't have the machine in front of me right now, and can't remember exactly).

I don't know if this works on the windows version, but you could try launching it from the command line and see if there's any output. Maybe get a chromium debug build or something? Have you tried other browsers?

You might be able to trace which files are accessed by it as it starts (using whatever the equivalent of strace is on windows - Process Explorer?).

Thanks for the advice and comments. Not sure how to launch from the command line - I've very little experience of Windows, although lots and lots of experience with DOS (of various flavors), Linux console/shell, and Linux GUIs.

I can get to the command line, just don't know what executable to run. I haven't tried other browsers, and I have no idea how to trace system calls on Windows without some sort of dev environment.

So far I've gone to chrome://plugins and disabled the Flash plugin, then re-enabled it, and now it seems to work.

Mostly.

Start -> Run; type "cmd"; drag & drop the chrome icon onto the command line window. You may need to prefix it with

  start /wait

To capture output. But there might not be any output.

Process Explorer traces some stuff, and doesn't need a system environment. I'm not sure if it would suffice, particularly with a process that dies quickly. You'd have to try it.

Good to hear that it works - not quite sure what you mean by "mostly". :-)

I'm no Windows expert but feel free to contact me out-of-band (contact info is in my profile) if you think I could help.

Let's cut RiderOfGiraffes a break; he's one of the most valuable users here.

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