Constant Flash-Related Safari Crashes

Question

I've got a 2008-vintage black Macbook (2 GHz Core Duo).  My hard drive recently died, and I replaced it with a Samsung SSD and did a clean install of the OS (Snow Leopard 10.6.8 - the newest version this laptop supports), with Software Update fully up to date.
I just installed the latest Flash Player from Adobe, and now I'm getting nearly constant Safari crashes (probably 6 or 7 in the last hour), which the crash message blames on the Flash Plugin.  I've never seen a single Safari crash on this laptop in the previous 4 years (with Flash always installed), so I'm really not even sure how to debug or try to fix this problem.  I've Googled for help, but haven't found any clear direction (and most of the forum posts and such are from 2011 or earlier).  I've tried rebooting, and uninstalling and reinstalling Flash, but none of that seems to help.
Any ideas on where to start would be very much appreciated.
JRjr

Answer 1

Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
Check which version of Safari is actually loaded. I recently reinstalled the 10.6.8 Combo Update v1.1 and discovered that Safari was still at version 5.0.5, rather than 5.1.7, the latest release.  Software Update did NOT discover that there was an update available, and did not offer to install it.
Searching Apple quickly located the WINDOWS version of Safari 5.1.7, but no link to the OS X 10.6.8 version.
OS X Safari 5.1.7 is available at this link from this non-Apple source at macupdate.com, a reliable vendor of Mac software. Click on 'Download Older Release' to get the correct one for 10.6.8.
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/15675/apple-safari
I also use the Click-to-Flash Extension to eliminate automatically loading most Flash content. You can 'whitelist' websites where you want to load and display Flash content automatically, and also set the preference to display HTML5 content when available.