Firefox 34 unstable. Plugins blocked, Flash not working, cannot update Flash. Cannot update FLASH, as Adobe not offering update.

Question

Repeated crashes with latest Firefox Version 34, running on Win XP SP3. Older Firefox version worked flawlessly. Update was a bad idea, as "security" fixes now block Flash from working. Attempt to update via Adobe cause further problems. Repeated crashes of internal program "plugin-container.exe". Poor product now, fails to provide the basic functionality - ie. viewing Flash video - that most web-brower users require. This solution was "solved" and worked fine, but stupid decisions appear to have been taken to block Flash, rather than fix the security vulnerabilites. Can't the leaky Adobe code just be "sandboxed" so code execution outside of a defined memory area is made impossible? About 1 billion global users rely on Flash, as most
video delivery websites use it. Just "blocking" the plugin is an arrogant goof's solution to the security problem.
But Adobe seems to have become obnoxious about not allowing or offering upgrades or fixes of Flash.
Recommended solution seems to be to download and install Dolphin browser, which is built to at least include Flash support internally.
Question: <nowiki>**********</nowiki>
Is there a recommended way to get the Flash plugin installed and working correctly in a recent version of Firefox???
Step by step instructions should be provided.
<nowiki>********************</nowiki>
It is almost 2015, and software development seems to be going retrograde, with "enhancements" simply crashing existing systems, and causing more problems than are solved. No wonder everyone is just disabling upgrades once they get a working
system. I deeply regret upgrading to Firefox Ver. 34, as it does not run Flash video correctly now.

Answer 1

*** SOLVED *** !!!
I was having strange problems re. Youtube+Flash website.
Turned out to be some hard-coded ip-redirection in my "hosts" file.
I found it by searching and reading all the "youtube" related Mozilla FIrefox support forums. Thanx for this forum, guys. It is a good resource. And I apologize for my cranky, petulant initial comment. It was inappropriate. The error was mine completely.
Problem was an old hard-coded fix that I put into my HOSTS file, on my Windows XP, SP3 machine. Specifically, I had experienced hang issues with a site called "i.ytimg.com", which I believe is the static cache for Google/Youtube stuff. I tracked this error down to failures of security certificates, but confirmed my security cert store was isometric between my machine cluster (they were all the damn same!)
So, I had put two lines in the HOSTS file, to hard-code an IP address so that Google-youtube pages would not hang up waiting for "i.ytimg.com"
Well, of course, Google/Youtube is now using different locations, or akami servers or some damn thing...
The fix just involved removing these two hard-coded lines from my HOSTS file. I just commented the old fix out, and now everything works.
<pre>
# --- two lines added to fix i.ytimg.com hang problem
# 74.125.162.39 static.cache.l.google.com s.ytimg.com
# 74.125.162.39 static.cache.l.google.com i.ytimg.com
</pre>
(The # symbol is used to make a comment in hosts file... )
On Windows XP, XP3, the "hosts" file is typically located in:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
If you are having goofy problems with some youtube/google webpages
not rendering, or generating SSL (bad_certificate) errors, check your
"hosts" file, and ensure no ip redirection has been slotted in there
from a while back.
Hope this helps others...
- Mark Langdon, GEMESYS Ltd.