Just wanted to tell others using Firefox 27.0.1 that this issue is still not resolved. I too was going nuts trying to figure out why using Firefox with Windows 7 64-bit the screen would shift focus and auto minimize or swap to a screen that was minimized. Sure enough, after reading this thread I could see it was only happening when there was Adobe content on the web page I was opening. This did not happen to me when I was using Windows XP. The fix for me was as per the instructions by jscher2000 above (disable adobe flash protected mode). I had actually done this with XP (in the Windows > System32 > Macromed > Flash folder), and I had tried it for Windows 7 64-bit but I went to the System32 folder. For Windows 7 64-bit you need to edit the mms.cfg file that's in Windows > SysWOW64 > Macromed > Flash and disable the protected mode for adobe flash player by editing the mms.cfg file there, open the file with notepad and add the line "ProtectedMode=0" (without the quotes). This also stops Adobe Flash Player from opening two instances in the infamous sandbox configuration, which I never liked (much like the Firefox plugincontainer.exe, which I also disabled). I don't know whether it's Windows 7 64-bit, Adobe, or Firefox that's got the coding problem, I'm just glad this is no longer a glitch for me.

THE PROBLEM WITH ADOBE SHOCKWAVE FLASH IS THAT IT ADDED IN A PROTECTED MODE - and 64 bit systems are not compatible with this protected mode which handles processes and memory usage differently. Flash already has sufficient security and protection - we are going to disable Adobe protect mode in Windows to fix Flash w/ 64 bit systems.

I strongly recommend this fix to anyone running a 64 bit system with Firefox being sluggish, slow, and having issues with unresponsive Flash Player Plugin and crashes. By the way I am using the latest upgrades and editions: Firefox 28 | Adobe Flash Player 12 Plugin version 12.0.0.77.

To stop the crashes you need to disable protected mode in Windows. This is very easy to do.

• Go to Start > My Computer (C:) > Windows > sysWOW64 > Macromed > Flash and double click it.

• Find the mms.cfg (or mms file) and Drag it to your Documents folder where you can edit it without being bothered about administrator privileges; "ACCESS DENIED".

• Open mms.cfg from Documents with Notepad. You will see:

      SilentAutoUpdateEnable=1
      AutoUpdateDisable=0

• ADD, on a separate line (case sensitive):

      ProtectedMode=0

• Save the file and close Notepad.

• Hold down the Ctrl key and drag the mms.cfg file back to the Flash folder to make a copy there, keeping the original in Documents.

• Restart Browser and Restart Computer.

After applying this fix I tested it in Firefox: I had one window with 10 tabs open (regular websites) and a second window with 7 open tabs (CNN news videos, Facebook games, You Tube, Blog pages, etc.) each of which needed flash player. I switched back and forth between each open tab playing, pausing and scrolling the video forward with no delays.

Everything worked seamlessly without any hangups. My entire browser experience was much faster again; switching between windows and open tabs without any time delay whatsoever.

Flash disaster best is described here:

I am finding that the internet is useless anymore because there are no browsers that work with flash. none. Not any. Not IE, not chrome, not firefox that pos. that used to hold so much promise and that I so loved to use. why after two decades can no one write a program that can browse the web, use flash, which is a requirement in most place, without crashing, without opening 28 shockwave processes that stop my computer from shutting down normally? That locks up and five seconds later says shockwave has stopped, and then has the balls to say, do you want me to ignore this message. goddam it yes I do! sorry folks. been using the net since there was a web and now its totally useless. My only comment would be don't waste my time with version numbers, uninstalls, upgrades and all the crap I grew up with windows, I understand "we are so stupid, jus re-install to fix it" That dog don't hunt I do all of that and know what I am doing. Plus, what exactly are the update notices for if when I say yes, the latest is not installed. already reinstalled windows 7, firefox latest, adobe latest not able to downgrade either as that process does NOT work. I just spent five hours on the web, hanging out on sites and getting tossed off, locked up,, and astounded to look at the task manage and see two dozen flash processes all running I open firefox every time, to adobe. com, hoping for some reason that would help. IT locks up on adobe's own site They suck as much as the browsers No, everything is new, updated, uninstalled, restarted in safe mode. when i use safe mode and hit a page that want flash, its "overload me time" with a dozen shockwave processes already started up.

This is really serious. I know I am royally pissed and could be friendlier, but the internet is all about web browsers an adobe flash when it fails, what good id the web and when will this get taken seriously? its a bad as if suddenly cell phones started crashing ten times a day. We need these tools and we need them to work, no excuses. I can't even order car parts at the local stores because I don't have a browser that will not puke on their flash content. IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all throw up when adobe is added or needed. I cannot contact adobe, they refuse to discuss it Are we all out here totally alone? the net is kind of important, what can folks do to make this work? I am no longer a programmer, but i do know that when I buy a product off the shelf, it works When I use this freeware that always had so much promise, it don't work and there is no one accountable to help me out.

Time for someone to create a browser that works on the world wide web I'll pay $75 for one that works and one that if it hiccups, I can talk to someone and get it fixed. Remember that freeware built the net?? that day is gone, freeware is destroying the net and I will pay for quality. its better than searching for help and reading ll the smarmy comments about, "fix it yourself" or reinstall it, or down grade it or start it in safe mode, or get a better rabbits' foot I find this to be a critical problem and again want it known that those who are not smart enough to deal with it, should be replaced by educated, paid programmers who are willing an able to make it work. I 'll pay. I don't think I am alone in that. The internet is dead without a web browser. My god, get the government involve, they could NOT screw it up more than the browser authors have done.. do we need a bombard adobe and knock them out of business, see to their demise? Help?????

Hi jalle007, I'm not sure I processed all of the details in your post. Did you disable the protected mode of the Flash Player plugin as described earlier in this thread? If you see "28 shockwave processes" then it sounds as though you did not. Please try that.

Thanks jscher2000. I have applied the protected mode workaround and, so far, it all looks good.

One other side effect that might be affecting other users: I found that every time a plug in crashed, it was writing crash dump information to this folder: c:\Users\MauriceSnell\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Crash Reports\pending\ and for some reason these were never being submitted - possibly because they were coming in faster than firefox was able to submit them? I deleted tens of thousands of files from this folder, taking up nearly 7Gigabytes of space on my C: drive! This didn't cause any problems.

I have a number of submitted crash reports in the adjacent folder, but these all seem to relate to full firefox crashes rather than plugin crashes.