Last updated: April 13, 2016
The following plug-in has crashed Shockwave Flash
Google Chrome users who encounter Flash content in their web browser may, on occasion, be met with The following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash error message. It may also display as The following plug-in is unresponsive: Shockwave Flash. There is a reason behind why the message displays. Below we show you exactly why, and how to fix it.
Google Chrome includes its own implementation of Adobe Flash Player. That is to say, Flash is built into Chrome, which is unique among browsers. If you happen to utilize multiple web browsers, then you likely have a separate installation of Adobe Flash Player that is used by your alternative web browser(s).
Google Chrome’s plug-in support page for Adobe Flash Player states, “If you’ve previously installed Adobe Flash Player separately, you’ll see two files listed for the plug-in. If both are listed as enabled, the version bundled with Chrome will be used.”
However, it appears that Chrome may not always know which Flash version to consistently use, causing Chrome to slow down, hang, and eventually crash. A solution is to disable one of the versions of Adobe Flash Player. First, check to see if Google Chrome has two version of Flash enabled. To do so, visit Chrome’s Plug-in page by typing chrome://plugins in the Chrome’s address bar (the same place where you type a web address/URL):
Scroll down the list of plug-ins and look for the plug-in called Adobe Flash Player. You will know Chrome is potentially using both the integrated version of Flash and the system version of Flash if you see 2 files:
At the top right of the Plug-ins page, click the +Details link to display the details for each plug-in. The details for Adobe Flash Player should now display as:
As depicted above, each of the 2 Adobe Flash Player files is enabled (since each of them have a link to Disable it). This is the potential source of the plug-in has crashed error (or the plug-in is unresponsive error). To help prevent this error from recurring, you may disable either of the Adobe Flash Player plug-ins by clicking the Disable link:
In our case, as shown in the above image, we decided to disable the system version of Flash, and leave Chrome’s integrated version enabled. You can tell which of the files is the Flash version integrated into Chrome based on its listed Location: it is located on your computer under the …\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\ directory.
With the system version of Adobe Flash Player now disabled in Chrome, the web browser will utilize only its integrated Flash Player version, hopefully alleviating The following plug-in has crashed: Shockwave Flash error message.
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