Flash Freezing Firefox

Factual Questions
1

My browser has suddenly decided to not play videos of any sort. I watched some as recently as last night but today, for no apparent reason, any time I load a site with a video, the entire browser freezes and I have to close and reopen it.

I’ve searched around for fixes, and it seems like it’s a common problem, but I can’t find anything that seems to help me. I’ve tried restarting, installing an older version of Firefox, and I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled Flash at least a dozen times. Now, one site says I don’t even have Flash, but others still show the first still of a video, but never actually play.

Does anyone have any experience with this, or any recommendations?

2

Flash is pretty processor-intensive. I know that the only thing that makes my computer’s fans kick up is watching a Flash video.

Have you blown the dust out of your computer lately? I’d be inclined to think that it’s actually a processor heat issue instead of a software issue.

3

Have you tried clearing the cache?

Have you tried another browser to see if the same sites work?

4

My laptop’s less than a year old, \has 4GB of memory, and is running pretty cool right now. I doubt that’s it.

5

Works in IE. Now Firefox just tells me I need the latest version of Flash, which I’ve downloaded a bazillion times, while IE plays the same videos with no problem.