Adobe Flash Player + AMD Catalyst = BSOD death sentence

[KemoKa]

Something my laptop has been doing for about the past several months is that a lot of times when I try watching a flash video on, say, Animefreak or Youtube, the display driver crash-and-burns, the video feed turns green and the driver comes back claiming it's recovered successfully. I always know it hasn't because whenever I try running flash player again, the machine BSODs instantly. Nothing in my filesystem gets damaged and restarting the computer takes only a few seconds because I'm running an SSD. I restart the laptop whenever the driver crashes and it usually sorts it out temporarily, but recently it has been doing it a lot.

It looks like AMD Catalyst is really living up to its name. I know their drivers have never really gone well together with Adobe Flash Player, but my laptop is literally the only machine I have had do this to me, and all the other computers I use have AMD chips.

Is there anything I can do to sort this problem out or will I have to sit back and wait patiently for AMD to benevolently bestow upon us a driver fix?

I heard disabling hardware acceleration in Catalyst would do the trick, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for your help!

[Sauron]

I used to have this problem on an nvidia card a few months ago, it's not so much a problem with catalyst but rather with flash player. That's the main reason for which I use chrome, I watch a lot of youtube and I couldn't stand the continuous crashes with flash player (chrome can use the full functionality of html5 on youtube). Flash is garbage, there's not much you can do about it. Try using a different driver version and see if flash "likes" it more.

 

@KemoKa

[GoodBytes]

Something my laptop has been doing for about the past several months is that a lot of times when I try watching a flash video on, say, Animefreak or Youtube, the display driver crash-and-burns, the video feed turns green and the driver comes back claiming it's recovered successfully. I always know it hasn't because whenever I try running flash player again, the machine BSODs instantly. Nothing in my filesystem gets damaged and restarting the computer takes only a few seconds because I'm running an SSD. I restart the laptop whenever the driver crashes and it usually sorts it out temporarily, but recently it has been doing it a lot.

It looks like AMD Catalyst is really living up to its name. I know their drivers have never really gone well together with Adobe Flash Player, but my laptop is literally the only machine I have had do this to me, and all the other computers I use have AMD chips.

Is there anything I can do to sort this problem out or will I have to sit back and wait patiently for AMD to benevolently bestow upon us a driver fix?

I heard disabling hardware acceleration in Catalyst would do the trick, but I'm not sure.

Thanks for your help!

Here is what I would do.

1- Open Control Panel, and open Flash Player panel (if you have icon view, else click on 'System and Security', and you'll find it all the way at the bottom)

2- In the Flash panel click on "Delete All..." button. This will clear all cache Flash has.

3- Close all web browsers

4- Uninstall Flash completely. To remove it, use Adobe Flash Uninstaller form Adobe web site. Unlike the normal uninstall, it will remove all traces of it.

Get it here: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html#main_Download_the_Adobe_Flash_Player_uninstaller

(first link at the top it says: "uninstaller (832 KB)")

5- Uninstall AMD drivers completely.

6- If you use Firefox, disable your add-ons. Better yet, if you don't mind, Click on the menu button > "?" button > "Troubleshoot information" > Reset Firefox. This will act like you freshly installed Firefox, but Bookmarks, saved password, and cookies will be kept.

7- Clear all cookies.

8- When done, restart your system.

9- Then let Windows install the graphics card, when done go to the next step.

10- Start Firefox, make sure it is fully updated to the latest version, and install back Flash: http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/distribution3.html (click on download MSI (you won't have the crap A/V or what ever junk Adobe tries to push on you face)

Now you are done!

Flash should start working correctly now. If not, let me know.

Here is what the above solves: the above steps has the goal to remove any potential conflicts with Flash and AMD drivers that somehow occurred.

If everything is working, and you want to get the latest AMD (or Nvidia) drivers, be sure that you click on Advanced in the setup, and be sure to just install the essential. For example on Nvidia GPUs, don't install the Nvidia 3D stuff, GeForce Experience and all that. Just keep the drivers, audio (if any) and PhysX.

Let me know how it goes.

 

I used to have this problem on an nvidia card a few months ago, it's not so much a problem with catalyst but rather with flash player. That's the main reason for which I use chrome, I watch a lot of youtube and I couldn't stand the continuous crashes with flash player (chrome can use the full functionality of html5 on youtube). Flash is garbage, there's not much you can do about it. Try using a different driver version and see if flash "likes" it more.

@KemoKa

All web browsers can use HTML5 YouTube, and you don't have access to all videos if you don't have Flash. Not to mention that the experience is not as good.

In addition, Chrome is not a good web browser at all. It is very resource hungry, and reduces significantly battery life, even if you have it minimized with 1 tab open. Chrome used to be good but no more. ANd that is not to mention them collecting data on you, such as every single web site you visit, even in private mode, and link it to your Google account. Didn't set it up. No problem. It will know when you login to YouTube or GMail or any Google service, and link that info to you.

In addition, telling people to switch web browser is not a solution.

[Sauron]

All web browsers can use HTML5 YouTube, and you don't have access to all videos if you don't have Flash. Not to mention that the experience is not as good.

In addition, Chrome is not a good web browser at all. It is very resource hungry, and reduces significantly battery life, even if you have it minimized with 1 tab open. Chrome used to be good but no more. ANd that is not to mention them collecting data on you, such as every single web site you visit, even in private mode, and link it to your Google account. Didn't set it up. No problem. It will know when you login to YouTube or GMail or any Google service, and link that info to you.

In addition, telling people to switch web browser is not a solution.

 

I know chrome isn't a great browser, and I'd really love to change, but html5 is perfect for me. It never crashes and chrome is the only borwser that allows you to see all videos with it and allows you to use all functions (all resolutions etc). Battery life isn't really a problem since I'm on a desktop ^^. I tried to stick with firefox as long as I could but eventually I really got sick of the flash crashes, I couldn't stand it anymore (most of the times I had to reset the machine, too) and i simply had to switch.

 

-edit-

might give a try to the list of fixes you posted though, I might get back to you if it fixes my problem.