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General discussion

Adobe Flash Player hangs certain sites on IE7

by Sunsetlover Jul 14, 2010 10:54AM PDT

Hello all,
I have an old computer that I just did a fresh reformat and clean reinstall of the OS on. I downloaded Flash Player 10.1.53.64, with of course no preexisting flash player version existing in my system.

Now when I use Yahoo especially, my browser hangs for 30-45 seconds (showing 99% of CPU), waiting for the Flash ad to reload. Every click on an email in Yahoo Mail usually produces that freeze. You can imagine how frustrating that is!

I think Yahoo's "abuse" with Flash ads is well documented. But is there a minimum RAM recommended for Flash Player? It's an old computer so I only have 1 GB on it.

Thanks!
WinXP SP2, IE7

Discussion is locked

3 Posts
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1GB
by MarkFlax Forum moderator Jul 14, 2010 8:56PM PDT

Is that 1GB RAM, or Hard Disk space remaining? That could make a lot of difference.

If your system's RAM is low, eg less than 512MB of RAM, the system may struggle with video applications like Flash.

If you are struggling with hard disk space, then that can cause performance problems as well.

You say this is an old system so it is possible the video card is an on-board card with the motherboard instead of a separate video card. If so, then the video card shares RAM memory with the systems RAM, and if RAM is small, then this may cause difficulties.

So what I am saying is, we need more details of your system specifications.

How did you do that fresh install? XP needs drivers as well as the Operating System and they have to be installed as well.

Mark

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Flash and 1GB RAM
by Sunsetlover Jul 15, 2010 12:25AM PDT

Thanks Mark.

That's 1GB of RAM. Hard disk space is over 90GB.

But your suspicion is correct, my video card has shared memory, I think up to 128MB.

I did the fresh install using the dvd I still have from Toshiba, all the drivers installed.

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Hmm. Ad Blocker?
by MarkFlax Forum moderator Jul 15, 2010 4:49AM PDT

That 1 GB RAM should be sufficient then, and while the 128MB shared memory video card isn't great, it shouldn't really be affected by Flash ads.

I don't experience Flash ads or many ads at all, at Yahoo or elsewhere, because I use a different browser Mozilla's Firefox, with Adblockplus, a Firefox add-on that helps prevent most web site advertising from displaying. I just subscribe to the EasyList(USA) filter in ABP, and even though I'm in the UK this blocks most advertising.

There isn't an official version for IE unfortunately. I note you are still using IE7, so I assume you will update to IE8 when Windows Update recommends it.

Have you tried any YouTube videos? They are flash based and that would be a good test of your video card.

I just wonder if there is some other thing that is causing this performance loss. With IE many problems are caused by bad or rogue add-ons, so possibly you picked up a bad add-on since the re-install.

What security applications do you have, like anti-virus, anti-malware etc? I ask because an anti-virus like AVG with it's LinkScanner browser add-on, (it may have a different name now), has been known to cause browsing problems.

Mark

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