Consulting the Geek Oracle

[Nanohedron]

Sometimes my laptop gets bogged down because Shockwave Flash can't load, tying everything up for long periods. Reloading or cancelling the Shockwave load according to prompts doesn't seem to make any difference. It's really a major pain. Not knowing what else to do, I've tried restarts; I've tried shutting the computer down and then turning it back on again. Sometimes this seems to help, but not always, so I suspect this "fix" is more of a coincidence.

Do I really need Shockwave (I don't even know why it's there), and if I don't, how the hell do I get rid of the damned thing?

[s1m0n]

Uninstall flash, or check if your browser settings has a mode like "enable plug-ins on demand". This'll stop flash and a bunch of other crap from loading automatically and slowing your computer down. Websites don't like it because it prevents them from bludgeoning you with video ads, but you'll have a nicer browsing experience. On my browser*, When a plug-in tries to load, I get a big black triangle to click if I concur. If not, it dies a lonely death and I'm left in peace. Thank God. I grew up without TV, and when I have my druthers, the internet is a text medium.

There have been recent articles about how major websites are abandoning Flash for native html 5 video, but there are plenty of holdouts, and frankly this is an evergreen article I've been reading for a decade. If you uninstall Flash, you'll break some of the holdout sites. Only you can decide how you feel about that. Flash is a much hated technology. I usually install a second browser, firefox or chrome, which has flash installed. If I run into something I really want to see and it won't run in my stripped down primary browser, I'll start up the other browser and paste in that url.

But on the other hand, I'm a curmudgeon.

*Opera, but I'm not certain the latest version has the same feature.

[s1m0n]

If you go to uninstall Flash, you might find it called Shockwave, Macromedia, or Adobe Flash. It's all the same sh!t.

[Tor]

Depending on which browser you use you should be able to find an extension/add-on that prevents flash from executing automatically, as s1m0n describes. I've used that for Firefox in the past (later I got that automatically without an extension simply by having a slightly old flash version installed.. firefox wil only run the flash thing if I click to accept it).
These days I'm running Chrome, well Chromium really, b/c Firefox takes too much CPU and memory. Flash isn't even supported and I don't seem to suffer from that, there are a few archaic, not very interesting sites which demand flash, but they are rare. Hopefully it's completely dead in a year's time, and we have one less malware&annoyance vector to bother with.

[Nanohedron]

I'm using Chrome. If Flash isn't supported, what's Shockwave doing there? Is it simply loading without a hitch one time, and having trouble the next? Or is it more or less storming the ramparts?

[Tor]

That's a bit strange. Is it possibly a slightly old version? I'm running Chromium, not Chrome, but as far as I know their differences aren't supposed to be about plugins.

If you enter
about:plugins
in the url bar, does it list shockwave? Because it doesn't on my computer, even though shockwave flash is installed (Firefox picks it up).

[megapop]

Yes, Adobe Flash is not only junk software in general but most importantly a constant cause of serious security issues; and since it's proprietary you'd always have to wait until Adobe themselves deigns to fix it. So a while ago Mozilla decided that enough is enough and disabled Flash by default in Firefox; now you always have to explicitly allow Flash every time a website wants to use it.

Chrome is using Google's own plugin API called "Pepper" in an attempt to reduce those issues; if you're experiencing problems, you can

1) try updating both Chrome and Flash. If there's an update available for Chrome, the hamburger menu in the very right upper corner will get coloured. Clicking it will provide an option to update; alternatively, you could download the latest version from their website and reinstall it (possibly a slightly better solution to make sure that eventual faults of your particular installation are getting eliminated; also try this if Chrome says it's up-to-date). As for flash, type chrome://components into the address bar, hit enter, and you'll get a list of all installed components. Look for "pepper_flash" and click "Check for updates".

2) disable Flash altogether. Visit chrome://plugins, look for "Adobe Flash Player" and click disable.

And if everything fails, you might try running Chrome from the console, visit a site where that behaviour occurs, and copy/paste the output here (or if it is a lot of text, post it on pastebin and give us the link). Maybe we can at least narrow down the issue this way.

x-posted with tor... huh, that's strange indeed :/

[Nanohedron]

Thanks for the info so far. Just at a guess, most of the incidents seem to arise around my default page (MSN, which I keep open for its news, such as it is, and less for the disturbing public stupidity and moronic advertising that attend it). All I need up is that, C&F, and a Google page; nothing hinky required. Much of the time there's no problem, but every now and then all the fun starts, and it carries over somewhat to C&F, but the real tie-up is on the MSN page. Google seems to be entirely unaffected. I haven't detected any particular trigger for it.

2) disable Flash altogether. Visit chrome://plugins, look for "Adobe Flash Player" and click disable.

Just did that, because what I'm gathering from you guys is that I don't really need it for anything. Didn't find Pepper, though.

Here's hoping.

[s1m0n]

I'm using Chrome. If Flash isn't supported, what's Shockwave doing there? Is it simply loading without a hitch one time, and having trouble the next? Or is it more or less storming the ramparts?

Adobe makes a flash plug-in for Chrome whether Google supports it or not. It could have installed itself at any time, either when you tried to view a flash video somewhere and clicked on a "click here to download and install the Flash player" error link, or by hitchhiking as crapware when you installed something else like an Acrobat reader or something. Adobe isn't above any of the dark arts of installbase manipulation, and they're also entirely willing to pay third-party freeware suppliers to add their products to a bundle.