When using Adobe Flash Player 10 why is there high cpu/memory usage (100% utilization)?

WOW! i have a quad core cpu and that almost maxed out 2 of the cores 89% and the other 2 cores went up to 60%. that's crazy

This has been happening on Pandora radio as well (mainly using Safari), but it's intermittent.

i thought i was the only one having these problems its nice to know that im not. i really hope that adobe fixes this bug to 100% CPU is ridiculous

Same Problem! I can barely scrape out youtube on normal video quality, but going up to high quality or HD sometimes even means a forced shut down if I can't regain control of or close IE. I have a 2.4GHz processor..... I can download a video with better quality and watch it just fine, but ANY flash app causes massive amounts of CPU usage. However, my friend running xp on a laptop with a 1.8GHz processor can watch HD youtube full screen. My only two guesses would be interference with Vista or with with AMD graphics cards... looking around I have found a lot of AMD users reporting the same issues.

I forgot to add i am using windows xp and the cpu is a AMD Phenom x4 - 3.8GHz but its clocked at 4.2GHz per core and this flash is bogging it way down. at times it maxes it out all four cores at 100% it should not be doing this at all not even close.

I see this happening on all sorts of pages with Flash embedded. Movies or not, FF3 or Safari 3 or Safari 4 Beta on the OS X Leopard

We need update, please...you can't listen to mp3's without them clicking and popping while you are surfing!

Same issue, all browsers.

There was a story years ago that Intel and Microsoft had a deal that Microsoft would keep bloating their software so Intel would sell new chips. It seems with the browser being a much more used component of day to day computer use that Intel needed a new friend. This is why Apple is always hesitant to support Flash. It's bloat. Why does Acrobat need to be nearly a GB install? Adobe is clearly Intel's new buddy.

I got this problem fixed on my computer. I removed ALL adobe programs the searched my computer for any left over adobe files and I found a lot of them, I shredded them them. then I restarted my computer. then ran another search and I found a few more adobe notepad files. I shredded them too. then restarted my computer again, and again I ran another search and found nothing. then I went to adobe's web site and got the newest flash player and saved the file to my desktop. then searched for the flash player patch. and saved it to my desktop too. Then closed the browser. cleared the browser's cookies and history. Then restarted my computer. Installed the flash player. restarted my computer Then installed the patch. restarted my computer again. now my CPU is running at 10% to 15 % on www.bacardi.com. before it was running at 98% It worked for me. Hopefully it works for you too?

I have CS4 installed; there is no way I am installing all of that just to improve Flash's performance. OTOH, it's like my whole computer is being taken hostage. I've just installed 4 GB of RAM today and I'll see if things improve.

No excuses! I signed up just to state a comment. This version of Adobe Flash IS the problem! Ram hog. Not websites, browsers, computers, GPU's, CPU's, or anything on the user's end. This is a flash version problem. Your problem.
Too many sites depend on Adobe flash and your killing them! Forget about watching HULU, Youtube, or any other dependant site without frustration from loading...its ridiculous! I have brought this issue up on many forums trying to fix the latency issues from websites...troubleshooting all the above stated end user issues...blaming sites, my computer, my ISP...and all this time its your stupid flash player that is the problem...universally! Fix it!
I've spend weeks trying to troubleshoot this and all this time it was your idiotic upgraded flash version! If there was an alternative I'd download it in a heartbeat! The sad part is, you know it! This is why you ignore our complaints as long as you can by sending us in absurd directions...sending us to sites telling us their to blame or our computers or our ISP's connection! Enough! The problem is your flash player! Get it?! Stop telling us on other forums its our end or the websites end.
I hope that you will begin to get letters and calls from everyone who is losing revenue that depend on Adobe flash via their websites. Maybe when your bottom line gets put at risk, maybe then, you'll stop making us chase our tails! For crying out loud, Fix your damn program!
Bronnster

Sorry for the lack of updates. Be assured that your comments do not go unnoticed and we are diligently working on this issue.

I have the same problem... I have amd 64 bit 3500+ with 512 MB DDR RAM ... After I installed flash player 10 every flash animation is a nightmare for me... uses 100% cpu. I downgraded to flash player 9 and still uses 100%.. So, the version 10 probably leaved some files..

this is bad! it has killed my web browsing experience! there had better be an update soon!

I have the same problem on this 64 bit AMD 4000+ with 2.5 gig of ram running Vista, flash videos using 60-70% of my CPU. My old 1.5 ghz sytem running XP with 500 meg of ram doesn't have any problem at all.

Please get this sorted out as it is seriously getting on my, and it would appear many other peoples, nerves.

I'd very much like to watch youtube, etc without listening to my CPU fan desperately trying to keep the thing cool.

I have the same problem , mine is vista,2 gig intel core 2 , 4 gig of RAM.. and my browser (with flash 10 player) crashed all the time...I tried all web browsers; safari, IE, FF.. no different...
Please help!!!

I have same problem oso. I am using a 2.6Ghz Intel processor PC.

The adobe flash player kill my FF i was often forced to end the FF and restart it. But thanks to the FLASHBLOCK plugins now I suffer no more. I recommend you all to use it.

Anyhow I come here looking for a block for yahoo messenger flash AD. It kill my yahoo messenger.(I just end task it, 100% usage!!!!)

So adobe flash team you see that your flash player actually annoy many of your user? Feedback to your big boss and get his attention that this is the utmost issues. Solve it or face losing more your user!

I have a Gateway MT3422 which is known to die from CPU heat. I have noticed a lot of these laptops dying recently. Could it possibly be from flash overheating the CPU? Just wondering.

Same problem. Running 1.83GHz Macbook Pro, OSX 10.5.7, Flash 10.

Videos (i.e. Youtube, Vimeo) are the worse, Vimeo for example is around 60%, and around 95% when full-screen. Youtube (lower quality compared to vimeo) is around 50%.

I have no idea what the hell your problem is (this is a very known problem — did you guys test on an 8-core Mac Pro or something? Because I find it hard to believe this issue didn't get noticed before you built and released the first public build...), but you need to get it sorted.

It's deplorable. Hulu.com is just unwatchable on any level with this release - and this is on a HP 3.2GHz hyperthreaded, with 4GB memory. I get nearly 100% CPU utilization, and memory is hogged.

I have two computers with this problem, A Dell XP pro. w. 2GB memory, dual processors and a HP - Vista with 4GB memory, dual processors. This is driving me mad, I have tried every trick in the book, uninstalling, reinstalling, removing, changinig browsers and sometimes I get some temporary improvements but in the end I get the same results, the browser, no matter if it is FF, IE or Opera will end up hoging all the CPU when running flash player. Maybe not right away but in after a few videos.

Only wanted to inform you guys that I am running Flash on a CoreDuo MacBook with 20% cpu on Safari 4 during single playback from tudou.com. Nevertheless I think there is a lot of room for improvement - even a simple 640x480 30fps MJPG stream (with is in my opinion the worst streaming video format) takes only 4-5% cpu on Safari.

So fix your cpu hog or you will be never ever on the iPhone ;)

I have a MacBook Pro 2.4 with 4GB ram, every time I open a page with flash animations/videos on it it's just a matter of seconds before both fans run at full blast. I wish you would fix this as flash is EVERYWHERE now. My computer very rarely runs hot for any other reason and I really hate fan noise! So be nice and fix this for us, will you Adobe? I use firefox, but it's the same in safari too.
Edit: I run the latest updated version of os x leopard.

Same issue...
Try msnbc.com...
If you hide the video the CPU goes down put what is the point then...

Same for Explorer, Firefox and Chrome

Yet ANOTHER user f-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-e-d by Flash's stranglehold on his CPU!

Browsing the Internet is so taxing these days because of Flash!

Possible solution offered in this forum. I have not tried this because I have reverted back to version 9. I can only hope that this may work for some of you.
Good luck.

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r2236...

Thank's Bronnster but sadly it made no difference.

Does anyone from adobe actually read this forum?

I've tried every fix on this site and others and still NO fix for adobe flash! When exactly and how many pissed off users of their product, flash, are needed to make themselves useful and get a fix for this obvious debilitating problem for ALL computer users that use their product, flash.

There is a lack of customer service to address this issue as it appears they do not feel it necessary to warrant any fix to help this flash problem. Either the CEO of the company and the technical support has so many requests for fixes that they are overwhelmed by the requests, or they have made no effort to post a fix in any of their forums, this or otherwise.

Adobe Inc. have neglected their obligation to users who have supported their product and have offered absolutely no constructive fix for this which undermines the value and reputation of this company, which reflects poorly towards their customers expectations and needs.

To not address this flash issue in a comprehensive manner has shown their lack of responsibility for their defunked flash product. I would suggest to adobe that they fix this problem that affect personal and businesses alike, and provide appropriate customer service, or they will feel the backlash of not meeting the quality standards that their customers need and expect.

Adobe, you have failed miserably!

Does this mean we'll have to contact the content providers and ask them to switch to Silverlight?

It did work for the US Presidential inauguration.

Agreed - Adobe buying Macromedia and hijacking Flash into this monstrous bloat-ware. I don't think Adobe realizes their "monopoly" is precarious. Folks will go where the stuff works well, and if that's Silverlight - then there you have it. Seems like 90% of Flash these days is just FLVs anyhow.

I have downloaded Silverlight now. If by chance, those who have lost traffic and/or revenue due to the arrogant behavior of Adobe in regards to the obviously bloated flash player's poor performance, notify us via Silverlight's forums. I will check often and I will gladly patronize your site.
http://silverlight.net/forums/25.aspx
http://silverlight.net/learn/learnvid...

I love Silverlight. Way to go Microsoft...

Flash to Silverlight is frying pan to fryer. What you're looking for is HTML5's Video tag, with support for the free video format, Theora. Because it's royalty-free and an open spec, lots of people can implement players, you don't have to depend on one company which may or may not be responsive to user complaints. Anybody can build a better player and charge for it or give it away. Even Adobe. Firefox 3.5 is due out any day now and supports it. Flash video is almost unusable on my brand new 1.6GHz Atom notebook, but salvation is nigh.

"What you're looking for is HTML5's Video tag, with support for the free video format, Theora."
Thank you for the information. Looking into it.
"Firefox 3.5 is due out any day now and supports it... salvation is nigh."
Good news and Good news.

Just installed Firefox 3.5, seems to help the problem.

Same problem with Firefox 3.5 for me.

Removing Flash solves the problem but then no youtube. If only they used <video>.</video>

ditto... streaming flash is unwatchable... boggles the mind how something like this could have been released by Adobe

flash seems ok for basic stuff like ads, but is a HOG for streaming content. It will easily take all CPU and get the fans spinning in a couple seconds because the computer (macbook pro) gets steaming hot.

this problem has been around for ages on every single mac browser i've tried, and going back several OS versions. It's not just the latest versions (including the one that was released today). When is Adobe going to wake up and fix this problem for mac users?

@ Kyle and Timeless:

Believe me, the link I gave here really solves adobe flash player excessive cpu usage...the installation/re-installation process is just used to assure that steps 7 onward will work correctly.

steps 1 through 6 are only a preparation for steps 7 onwards. you can ignore steps 1 to 6, and go directly at steps 7.

please let me know if it works for you. thanks!

It's not a matter of believing that your issue was solved by fixing some Windows permissions, but this is a cross-platform problem and Windows access semantics aren't in play on Macintosh or Linux machines - there are no complex permissions matrices there to tweak - the concept of 'full control' simply doesn't apply to their discretionary access control model. That is to say, you've probably solved a separate problem with similar symptoms, which is great - some of the people here may have that problem, and not merely be suffering from unoptimized CPU-hogging code.

Ok, so, this droL fella is some anoying idiot, who replies like a bot, and it is obvious that he is promoting flash player, for a download count. this "fix" doesnt fix a thing.

the problem is CPU load, not your "authorisation", you ignorant spamer! and, your solution does not mention CPU usage, just a faulty player.

so, what to do now, i seached all of the internetz (came across the drol spammer a lot) and did not find anything.

i have a powerfull machine, my PC specs: Phenom2 9550 OCed, 2x2GB, and 4870 ATi, and my CPU still jumps high when flash content (not just videos) are running, in any browser (tried chrome, IE, FF, and Opera)

Gnash project is trying to make a valid alternative, but the problem is that there is no sound, in newer youtube vidoes. and, it requires instalation of several codec packages.

so, i did a little research about this, and accidently i found something out - on 9 out of 10 PC's I came in contact with, there is a flash player 10 problem. and, on my neighbour PC - there is latest flash updated - and no lag, no slowing down, no CPU usage over 50%. and she has Athlon 3200+ with 1Gb ram. som i checked her system, for everything - same FF, same registry entries, everything is the same, with one difference - she has Win XP 32bit SP2.

so, i imply one of you - if you know a friend with OS that has not been updated lately, and that runs SP2 XP, please try to see if there is a difference in flash player CPU consumption.

Ok, so i found a ridiculous solution. it soo has noyhing to do with common sense, and everything that me or you know about PC's, that i am still shocked.

searching for answers, i found out about some dude that posted a solution with cleaning dust in his PC. out of despare, i looked into it (he obviously lowered CPU temp by cleaning the dust from the fans)

it is summer, here in Serbia, from where I am. and my room temperature is high, cause AC unit is in the living room.

so, unlike in the winter, my overall chassis temperature is higher. i have an OCZ Vindicator, whitch is a good cooler, but stock fan runs on low RPM, only 1000, and i did not have any other 120mm fan for Vindicator. Everest reports that my temp is 65c

so, i took Intel X6800 extreme box, from some other PC i assembled, and found in it unused Intel 775 stock cooler. then the work started - i modded the base of the cooler, and made fot it an AM2+ attaching base (for my phenom) and by modding the electro engine in it, i raised default 2000 rpm to 3000+ rpm, and putt it on the CPU - everest now reported that temp is 48, and that rpm of the fan is 3150 (whitch is probbably incorrect)

while playibg Biotronic on facebook (flash game) with first settings - i had 90% CPU with spikes to 100%

now - there is 65% CPU with spikes to 75% and there is no slowing down, or frame skip, or anything.

this IS THE SOLUTION, but it does not make sense. CPU by all means should run SAME on any temperature, untill CPU crashes, or MoBo BIOS shuts him down (if there is a temp limit set)

is there some ridiculous bug from Adobe developers, that connected memory usage of the app, with CPU sensor, or what ? i really dont know, go ahead and try this solution. i don know what to make of it.

SO ADOBE you going to fix this problem or what??

This problem is so F*****@#@# annoying I have Flashblock disable all flash.

FIX THE DAM PROBLEM PLEASE PLEASE!

this problem has gone on for to long and why havent we had a response from adobe yet?

Igoritza, does your BIOS do dynamic frequency scaling? It may scale back your CPU max depending on temperature. Your instincts are right, that Adobe code doesn't alter the way computers work.

I agree with most of the above posts. I also wish the little bot, droL, would stop with the repetitive posts. Once is helpful, but someone with the ability to edit needs to step in and remove repeat postings.

Hello All,

After reaching heights of frustration with Adobe flash player on my Dell Inspiron laptop for many months, I am writing this note. I literally wanted to break the laptop as I had nightmares watching MLB live games on this laptop.

I read all posts mentioned above and I then tried to resolve the problem with a clean state. I uninstalled all Adobe programs (including, flash player, shockwave flash, Active X plug-ins on IE, even Acrobat reader), ensure that Adobe files or folders are not orphaned in my laptop and rebooted the machine. This was done using uninstall utility provided by Adobe. I had to explicitly uninstall shockwave flash from Add/Remove programs.

After unintalls were done, I went to adobe site and had a clean install of v10 Flash Player.

I don't know if above would work for all, but in my case, it appears to yield expected results. I dont want to be ecstatic until I am absolutely sure and I am testing it at this time. As of this time, youtube or mlb or any other streaming video site has never choked the CPU beyond 65%. It used to be at a constant 98% before I performed above steps.

Forgive me if someone else posted the same suggestion earlier, I am just trying to see if it would help others.

Good luck. Aaron S Malladi

Here are some good resources to show that Adobe is concerned about performance, and to help you understand how Adobe tries to help programmers using our platform to optimize their applications' performance as well. Though this is AIR branded, it speaks to the Player in general since it is much of the core of AIR.

http://blogs.adobe.com/air/performance/

Following three links deep there yields a positive comment:

We are laser-focused on improving CPU usage and recognize that it is a concern other developers and end users share as well. We hear you and we are absolutely positively working on it. :)

I am working on a blog post on our team blog to share a few tips related to this topic.

Thank you,
-Rob
Product Manager, Adobe AIR

That's hope anyway.

The solution that I thought was working, actually worked for only few hours. i dont know what happened next day, I am back to the same problem. It is incredbily frustrating to know that there isn't any software chosen by Internet sites other than this problematic flash player.

We are laser-focused on improving CPU usage and recognize that it is a concern other developers and end users share as well. We hear you and we are absolutely positively working on it. :)

mGin pointed out this concern/question on March 08, 2009 03:33, the starter of this thread. Maybe Mr. Product Manager Rob and his team need a better "laser-focused" setting adjustment eh?

"In order to view this site, watch this video, view these photos, listen to this song, etc..., YOU MUST DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL ADOBE FLASH...

This phrase is what monopolizes my choice. I should not need a degree from MIT in order to tweak Adobe Flash settings just to enjoy the Internet as an End-user. This is the problem, and this continued issue with high CPU usage being set aside in order to pursue newer product issues such as AIR, shows nothing more than arrogance in knowing that the End-user can do nothing more than spew their frustrations on sites and forum.
So far all I hear from Adobe is, "So what, nothing you gonna do about it hehehe. We'll get to it when we get to it."

Have this problem for at least _months_, on multiple PC-s, OS-es and browsers. (Also took a few clean reinstall rounds - with same "result" as Aaron S Malladi.
It's _clear_, that this is not a question of efficiency or so-called "performance" - there's a plain old BUG that hogs _any_ CPU down to 100%, regardless of it's maximum power.)

Took a "little" time, to figure all these out (tought for a while, that it's a Firefox issue), and I simply can't believe this level of ignorance from such a company.

Do they really think, if they do this with a proprietrary product of theirs - that won't have an effect on their other products sold for money, and having concurrence?!?

I hope, _everybody_ learns from this issue, not to use a proprietrary product of companies becoming kind of monopolys this way - because when there's such a bug, it's only a matter of luck to get the finger from them or not.
Long live open source!

I think we should all start sending emails to webmasters of Hulu, YouTube, etc. Ultimately, that is who Adobe makes a profit from. Maybe if the site developers start to see that their clients can't use their services anymore and are loosing revnue as a result, they will start to put pressure on Adobe. (or even better.. start to consider switching to a different platform!) I used to visit Hulu 3-5 times per week... I haven't been there for over 5 months now since flash started killing my computer. We can sit here and whine to Adobe all day long, but it doesn't matter to them until the people writing them checks start to complain or jump ship.

I'm glad I found this thread after wondering for months what was wrong with my Dell Inspiron laptop. I could never trace the source of why the CPU usage would suddenly spike and end up with me doing a reboot. I was blaming antivirus programs, going from one to another, was ready to trash the laptop.
This laptop has 4GB of ram so I knew it could not be hardware. I switched to Firefox- same issue. I started car shopping and noticed this happened when going to the Mazdausa site. Finally figured out that the Flash content was causing the spike as I watched the CPU usage tank when the Flash content started to run.
I also had an older Dell laptop in the desk, running XP SP2, with 2GB ram. I dug it out and installed Flash v10, went to the Mazdausa site, same freaking problem--- so it has nothing to do with Vista.

I tried the link/procedures above, didn't work for me.

God I hope they fix this soon before a laptop goes flying.........

if u use firefox, install flashblock addon. Of course now I need to do extra by clicking on the flash placeholder to show the flash because I block all flash by default. But I am d*mn happy doing the extra step because most the time the flash content on the web nowadays is flash ad that is redundant.

Thanks for that hint. Alot quieter PC now.
Adobe really need to fix this. Getting def up with explaining to customers that its flashing making there PC run slow & no I cant fix it until Adobe do

For some users out there, it might not be adobe that's causing the problem although large cpu usage occurs when playing flash files like in youtube. I have experienced it before and had suffered for months trying to figure out a solution but was focusing my attention in a wrong place. There are alot of suggestions I've found on the Internet, from updating Windows to Updating Adobe flash to cleaning my CPU compartment. But then, just recently I found a solution that dropped my cpu usage from agonizing 100% to 10 - 20%!

SearchIndex function of your computer might be the culprit, which hogs the cpu resource when it encounters problem in indexing. This works quietly in the background, and I used Process Explorer from Microsoft to detect it. SearchIndex always came on top of the list, using 50% of the total CPU consumption.

So I search MS knowledge base on how to resolve problem involving SearchIndex, and one good solution I found was go to CONTROL PANEL, click INDEXING OPTION, and then RESET it. It might be that the Indexing was unable to finish the whole routine and hangs up. You need to reset it to restart its indexing. Don't worry about the problem of encountering the same headache after some time. I've been using my pc for weeks now and everything's as smooth as silk. :)

Good luck!

6 months now since this thread was started and STILL NO TRACE OF A VIABLE FIX!

Adobe! You arrogant clowns! FIX IT!

I agree, it's very frustrating. And being reassured every few months that Adobe are focussed on performance in general doesn't do it for me.

I have had this problem for months on both my desktop and laptop. I avoid using adobe flash whenever possible. Now I am really getting angry. I work at home and am currently doing online training for a new WAH opportunity. Now some of the modules use Adobe Captivate. I don't have the option to just avoid it. This is ridiculous. This is their presentation software and of course its based on Adobe Flash.
This is in their promo:
"Adobe® Captivate® 4 software helps corporate trainers, educators, and business users design engaging, interactive multimedia and Adobe Flash® Player compatible presentations online that quickly communicate knowledge visually and effectively — without skills in HTML or the Adobe Flash authoring application."
They really need to fix it before they add to it.

Why not writing a petition on facebook or petitiononline.com? Someone with good writing skills around?.. We could also mention the fact that wasting CPU power is wasting energy and contributes to global warming, thus making Adobe a non-ecofriendly company. That's just an idea...

Did it again: CPU overheating while watching a Flash video, to the point the Macbook forces a shut down.

Thank you Adobe for ruining my web experience.

I gave up for now and disabled the Flash add-on for IE a few days ago, it's not worth the frustration. Before I figured out the culprit, I was actually looking at buying a new laptop I was so sick of dealing with the slowdowns, sure glad I didn't waste the $$$. I am waiting for Windows 7 to come out and hoping somehow this will resolve itself since it seems like Adobe isn't going to help.

Using Firefox and NetVideoHunter, I now download the videos I want to see, and then I watch them with FLV player. Problem solved. Bite me, Adobe.

Hello I had the same problem and i signed up to report that installing an older version of the flash player - Version 9.0.47 to be more precise - has apparently improved the situation (for now).

I uninstalled flash with the removal app, then downloaded an the verision 9 pack from here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/142/tn_14266...

and installed the one labeled r47. there was a marked improvement but i still feel the cpu usage is higher than it should be (higher than it used to be anyway).

maybe some other releases work even better. maybe some other people could try the others and find which one works best?

good luck.

This is getting beyond a joke, my girlfriend's laptop shut down tonight watching a streaming site using flash because the CPU overheated.

And you useless wankers are doing absolutely nothing about it.

Why should this garbage programming be such a resource hog? It wasn't in the past until you lazy idiots messed it up. I hope you're proud of yourselves for pissing off so many people without having the courage to face your accusers.

You're cowards and you're incompetent.

6 months plus and no answer.

How much are you being paid?

Are you going to buy everyone who's computer dies through your own arrogant inadequacies a new PC or Laptop?

I'll add myself to the chorus of unhappy consumers. I have the problem with IE8 and Firefox. Had the problem with both Vista and with a clean install of Windows 7.

Laptop is Inspiron E1505.

I can watch the first moments of a flash video, but then it just chokes and dies on the spot. Very depressing.

I am somewhat relieved to learn that it is not only my computer is having this issue. It's frustrating for me because Youtube and Hulu is now unwatchable. Not to mentioned movie and movie clips from Yahoo that rely on Adobe Flash. It seems that this is a known issue going back to when Adobe Flash 10 was first released, and it's disappointing that there is no fix in sight. The only thing left for any of us to do is complain to the web masters of internet sites that are using Adobe Flash and insist that they use an open standards flash.

This happens on my system as well, XP SP3, Core2Duo T7300, 2gb ram, FF3.5 and Chrome 3.0.195. At least in Chrome I can end task Flash without closing any pages. Actually, Flash has crashed on it's own in chrome, I only had a few flash pages open as well. With previous Flash versions I've had over 30 youtube pages open at once with no issues.

This happened to me as well. It took several days of trial and error, but it occurred to me that I had never installed the flash plugin for IE, only the FF version. So I installed BOTH the FF and IE flash packages, and voila! CPU runs at a normal speed now.

What is the "FF" version?

Eric, If you didn't have the IE flash plugin installed, you wouldn't experience the CPU issue. The CPU only goes haywire when a stupid Flash app is using it. And if it its not installed in IE you will be given a message telling you to install it.

Shirley - you can install it via either browser. But adobe has a separate download for IE. Both are installer packages. My CPU went haywire when using flash apps, or watching flash videos. After installing BOTH versions of the flash installer, (first the FF version that makes me add some adobe download manager plugin to FF before I can download it, then the IE version downloaded via filehippo) problem solved. I don't mean an adobe plugin (sorry, I know that's the word I used) - I mean the installer.

Anyway, my cpu issue is solved. I made an account to share since I thought my remedy might work for others too.

I still don't understand. In my situtation, (on two different computers) I uninstalled ALL adobe flash files with the tool from Adobe. It removes all the files so then if you want ot use IE your are prompted to install adobe flash player when you go to a website that has flash content. Same thing for Firefox or any browser for that matter. How do you get to the adobe download manager plugin for FF to download a plugin for IE?

@Shirley. Sorry, I suck at explaining things :(.

I uninstalled flash. Then went to adobe.com in FF to redownload the flash installer. Run the installer. Then go to http://www.filehippo.com/download_fla... and download the OTHER flash installer. As soon as this second flash installer finished, my cpu returned to nomal usage. I am very curious to know if this works for others as well.

Bring on html5!

Problem is that flash was never made for the purpose of playing back videos. It's some weird perversion that it has become that way thanks to youtube et al. The code of silence protrayed by the Adobe guys probably means they are stumped, and a solution in the near future is unlikely.

Also, compared to a normal media player, flash does not "write" directly to video; it writes to the browser or OS, which then relays information to the screen. Because of this, the CPU has to do a lot of heavy lifting as there is minimal involvement by the video adapter / GPU.

In my opinion, if you're going to watch a video in HD, just make sure that it's the only thing you do, e.g. close all other windows. Otherwise, try a lower resolution.

If you have a newer browser version, youtube et al are adopting html5 movie playback as a replacement to flash. This is the nail in the coffin for flash playback and will probably come as a relief to Adobe, after all their video libraries weren't originally written by them and they're probably sick of supporting them.

For Firefox check out the Flashblock add-on
For Safari install ClickToFlash http://rentzsch.github.com/clicktoflash/

I had never had such issue with any Flash version before 10, even with adobe's. Now I have exactly that lousy sympton on every and each computer I've testified, be it Safari or Firefox on Mac OSX 10.5 or 10.6, Windows XP or Vista running it on Chrome, Firefox or IE, or Ubuntu 9.04 with its Firefox or Shiretoko. Granted, I haven't (yet) tried Opera or Konqueror, but I doubt it will do any better. This is really weird and highly frustrating.

There are plugin alternatives, I've tried gnash and swfdec before on my ubuntu FF, but oddly I can't find them now! My only option to skip this issue is running a Super Ubuntu Live CD, which comes with outdated flash. I still should try a regular Live CD, but those come with no flash and I'd have to hope for swfdec.

Thing is the alternatives fail at loading some pages... As someone mentioned before, bring on HTML5!

I have read all over the Internet about people having this problem -- and there is no solution yet. I agree that the Adobe developers must be completely stumped. If they weren't, I'm sure they would concentrate some heavy effort in fixing the problem. They probably hired a bunch of developers over in India. My company did that and they are a bunch of the dumbest flucking idiots. Saving money at the cost of quality... it's the American way.

It started for me 3 days ago. Why now, what has changed ?
It was just after the big Tuesday updates from Microsoft, which included .Net update, but I don't see how this is relevant.
I can't watch youtube, I can't watch most video sites.
I'm mad.
And you should see the Firefox support site - most people are blaming Mozilla :-<<

No way it's not a problem with just Firefox. EVERY browser I've tried has the same problem. I've tried Chrome, Firefox, IE6, IE7, and IE8. They ALL peg the CPU and eat up hundreds of megs of RAM upon opening any flash object. This is on a desktop with 3 cores, 2GB 1033MHz RAM, and an nlited version of 2K3. It FLIES on anything but flash objects.

Jool I am pretty much the same way, I was fine until big Tuesday. I really feel like banging my head in the wall because I have tried everything it seems.

The only way this will be solved is if Google (YouTube) decided to move to something else or threatened to do it. Adobe doesn't seem to care - this problem has been around a long time.
Not that divx is much better - I get 70% cpu if running divx inside firefox, but if I get the exact same video and run it outside the browser in VLC, it only takes 40%. So I can't tell if it is because of the browser or the add-on. I am going to try the same experiment with flv (flash) files.

But it has become impossible to watch videos. Some can be downloaded and watched in a separate player but not all.
I like Leo Laporte live video, but I can't watch it anymore (since last Thursday), because it takes 100% cpu, gets stuck, jumps etc.

Hi and thanks for the reply. I installed it awhile back - probably a few months now, and at that time it was probably the current version. I suggest trying with the current version and see how it works. I did uninstall all of the Flash player versions (I had several) before re-installing the IE Flash version. I stream music from Last.fm in an IE tab within Firefox w/o pegging CPU and I can run Youtube videos, though I have limited these so consider this test a bit unproven as I've "babied" my machine in this respect so as to get work done w/o the CPU issue.

Thanks!

Check this nonsense out thesun.co.uk 100% CPU with or without flash eventually stabilizes move cursor about 100% CPU !!!!!!

Great Article Go Apple!
http://scitech.blogs.cnn.com/2009/11/...

I would request that MATTHEW LAUN whom is categorized as COMPANY rep in this topic (and all ADOBE topics) would please remove his comment from the earlier feeds under this TOPIC & QUESTION as it appears it is being addressed by adobe seeing his link at the top of this page yet the answer he has linked to this problem is regarding AIR and NOT the same issue we are referring to...

Cmon Matt... remove yr participation from this as we need a real answer here & yr coment as a Customer was not only unrelated but is not from ADOBE & i want ADOBE to give this damned prob some attention...

!Thanks much and no offense intended to u...

Well done Rhonda you've interpreted correctly also happens on timesonline.co.uk, my theory is that there is software in all PC's some more than others that register the user's every cursor move that way they know the persons habits ie some adverts attract cursor movements more than others I'm not saying a click through I'm saying cursor hover marketing! Just in aptly attributable!

The problem with Adobe flash player is that it tries to do too many things - not just showing a video, but all sort of sophisticated flash objects.
This is why VLC needs less cpu.
What we need is a simple browser player that only shows videos, without funny stuff.

had the high cpu problem in firefox and ie; i tried a couple of suggestions i saw in postings with little change. uninstalled flash player, then opened firefox and went to youtube; installed flash plugin when prompted. then opened ie and went to youtube, and installed flash when prompted. now both ie and firefox play flash videos fast and flawless, with little overall cpu usage. i also did the same thing on my laptop and in the same order; the results were the same and flash works properly in both browsers. both machines are single-core intel p4 @~2.6/2.8ghz; both have on-board video cards with video memory sharing. both machines have 512 ram.

note: i was having problems with ie running 100 percent cpu while just open on comcast homepage and no video running. now running about 15 percent with same page open.

1. uninstall flash player
2. install firefox plugin
3. install ie flash