Safari randomly crashes when running Flash content
Downgrading to an earlier version may help.
[Wednesday, May 14th]
One of the most pervasive causes of crashes in Safari involves Adobe Flash content, in part because of the widespread use of Flash in banner ads. As reported by one poster to Apple's Discussion boards, Espen S.:
"For the third time Safari has crashed while I was writing an email at Yahoo. The message that popped up after Safari disappeared stated that it probably had to do with the Flash plugin. The only update I have done, apart from Apples own, is to download and install the latest Flash player from Adobe (9.0.115.0)."
This creates a situation where Safari will seem to randomly crash in the middle of browsing as well.
The latest Flash update, the release was intended to tackle many security vulnerabilities in previous versions of Flash. However, the crashes that are occurring seem to indicate problems with this new code. Crash reports indicate security routines are to blame for the crashes. Excerpts from a typical crash report:
- Thread 7 Crashed:
- 1 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x17199b5d Flash_EnforceLocalSecurity 98677
- 2 ...romedia.Flash Player.plugin 0x16eb2406 0x16dd6000 902150
- 6 libSystem.B.dylib 0x90ec6c55 _pthread_start 321
Fix: In some cases, downgrading Flash to a different version can resolve this issue. We recommend version v47. To downgrade, follow these instructions:
- Go to this page and download "Flash Player 9."
- When you open the package, open the "9r47 Folder". There, select flashplayer9r47_ub_mac.dmg.zip (flashplayer9r47_max.zip is for PPC only) for machine. This installs Flash 9.0.47.
- Reset Safari (clear out all cache and cookie information)
In other cases, you may ned to remove Flip4Mac (Microsoft WMV components for QT). Some users have reported that removing Flip4Mac quicktime components have stopped the Flash-related crashes.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
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