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Firefox 3 crashes when trying to play Flash videos on Windows XP

Last Update: 12.07.2008

A really strange behaviour occured to me today, when trying to play certain Flash videos (namely on www.sf.tv): My Firefox 3 browser crashed as soon as the Flash videos started to load (see screenshot). What to do in this case? Troubleshooting!

Here are the system specifications on the affected machine:

Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 3
Browser: Firefox 3.0
Flash Player: 9.0.124

On a website (http://www.tech-archive.net/Archive/WinXP/microsoft.public.windowsxp.general/2008-07/msg00395.html) I found the hint, that the newest (BETA!!!) version of Flash Player would solve this problem. So I installed Flash Player 10 Beta 2 from http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html. In the release informations of this version I read "bug fixes" - so let's give it a try.

After removing all previous Flash versions and the installation of the new Flash Player 10 Beta 2, all the Flash videos worked really fine! Thanks for this great advice, Arte Marte!

Update on 12th July 2008:
I was working on my laptop with installed Windows XP SP3 now. There is alsoFirefox 3.0 and Flash 9.0.124 installed. But the videos worked fine without a crash. The difference to the computer at work:
- Different hardware
- The internet connection at work goes through a proxy server
So I assume the following facts lets Firefox crash: Windows XP SP3 -> Firefox 3 -> Flash 9.0.124 -> Internet connection through proxy.