Flash Hanging Google Chrome

After moving to Windows 8, I reinstalled Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox alongside Internet Explorer. However, a week after getting Windows 8 up and running I found that Chrome would freeze whenever Flash content was present on a page (which is still quite often). The source of the problem was clear but the solution had yet to be nailed down.

For those that don’t know, Chrome bundles in and manages its own copy of Flash which negates the need to separately install Flash. This is handy but problems can arise if duplicate Flash plugins are installed alongside the managed instanced provided by Google Chrome.

The solution is to disable one of the Flash plugins within Google Chrome as follows:

1. Open Google Chrome,
2. Type in “about:plugins” in the address bar and press “Enter”,
3. On the Plug-ins page click the Details link in the top right of the page,
4. Locate the entry for Flash which may read as “Flash (2 files) ” or similar,
5. Disable all but one instance of Flash by clicking on the Disable link,
6. Close and reopen Google Chrome.
7. Browse to a page containing Flash content and see if it still hangs,
8. If Chrome still hangs, repeat steps two through seven as necessary until all Flash plugins have been test.

For the record, I had to disable the PPAPI (out-of-process) plugin located at the following location:

C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\21.0.1180.83\PepperFlash\pepflashplayer.dll

Your mileage may vary but this worked a treat for me.