Vista - Is Flash 10 causing IE to freeze, hang and not respond?

Posted this in the IE newsgroup. Thought I'd put it here too, and see if anyone has thoughts?

Noticing a rash of users in this forum discuss how IE 7 is suddenly
freezing, not responding or not working in recent weeks. Problem seems
most common on Vista, but appears on XP, too. Getting the same problem
myself on both a Dell desktop and Compaq laptop running Vista SP1.
Problem often appears when using multiple tabs in IE and/or when
closing the IE window. Flash 9 caused freezes too, but it appears more
common with Flash 10. Sometimes the freezes are blatant -- and result
in a pop-up error. Other times the freezes are over in a second or two
-- and you only see the error if you check Vista's Performance
monitoring tools. And it's not just IE. Users are reporting freezes
with other browsers like Firefox and Safari.


For what it's worth, been able to stop the behavior in IE by disabling
Flash. This is done by using Tools>Manage Add-ons>Enable or Disable
Add-ons and highlighting Flash and disabling. If you really need
Flash, you can open a fresh IE window and enable Flash temporarily and
disable it when you're done. Clearly, this is more of a crude
workaround than a solution, since Flash is so common on the Web and
actually required by some Web sites.
This issue is being vigorously discussed at Adobe's online forum,
including here:
Is Flash 10 causing Internet Explorer to freeze and not respond - microsoft.public.internetexplorer.general | Google Groups#

There is still no solution, though. Unfortunately, some users assume
the issue is with IE -- and direct the blame to the incorrect party.
Hopefully this issue can be dealt with. In the meantime, does anyone
know of a better workaround than just enabling Flash when it's
absolutely needed?

It's an interesting discovery, that Flash 10 is causing such widespread problems with browsers. It seems that these problems are not confined to our own PC's, but are also messing up websites that use Flash, which were otherwise working before.

For example, the popular PhotoBucket site no longer works correctly, and PhotoBucket's admins are trying to 'fix' it: http://forums.photobucket.com/showthread.php?t=30263

Is there any way to 'roll-back' to version 9 until Adobe fix version 10?

Oh, and here is the 'correct' link to the Adobe website discussion (the one in the previous post goes to Google groups, and then has the link there):
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/webforu...&enterthread=y

I, too, am experiencing the IE 7 lockup problem since installing Flash 10. I have no doubts that this is a Flash problem, not a Vista, XP or Microsoft problem. If I disable Flash 10 in the Add On Manager, the problem goes away. If I re-enable it, I can't follow any links from the page where I start IE. Clicking any link causes IE 7 to hang, and have to be force restarted. Looks as though once again, this burning desire to put out "major revisions" to established software, and force everyone to use the newest by not including backward compatibility has bitten us in the gluteus maximus. How about a little help from Adobe on this? Not forthcoming from what I've seen of their response, which includes the usual finger pointing. When enough people come to realize that Adobe has once again "broken their internet" (to use a term I hear a lot in my tech support job), maybe Adobe will fix their problem or at least come to admit that it is their problem.

Sincerely,
Sick O. Itall

AH, so that's what is making IE7 freeze. Thanks for the info.
Brian.

I suggest (as I did myself) a downgrade to previous 9.0.124.0.
Close all programs, uninstall Flash 10 from usual Control Panel, and install 9.0.124.0 from: Download Flash Player 9.0.124.0 (IE) - FileHippo.com

Many, including myself, have reported this probelm with Flash 10. Not surprisingly, Adobe is completely ignoring it, as tjdavid21444 notes. Do as hexaae suggests and revert back to 9. Here are some additional (direct) links from Adobe for Flash 9:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...9_ax_debug.exe

and here's the uninstaller:

http://download.macromedia.com/pub/f...ash_player.exe

I could not download Flash9 from Adobe. It gave me Flash 10 when I tried. I did get Flash 9 from filehippo, and no more freezes in 2 days. Used to get 1-3 per day.