Safari 4.0.4/Firefox 3.5.2 Freeze on Flash Content in Tiger 10.4.11

Question

Sorry for any cross postings. I can't seem to find a thread where this issue is started by someone who is using Tiger as opposed to either Leopard.
Both Firefox and Safari get the spinning beach ball of death when they encounter Flash programming. I first encountered it with the Huffington Post website on Wednesday night, and then noticed it when trying to access some pages in Facebook with video, and ditto with Youtube. All Flash content.
My first attempt to deal with this was to just uninstall Flash. That worked, in the sense that pages no longer hung. However, I do need some of that Flash content and having uninstalled Flash, I couldn't access that content.
So yesterday I installed SafariStand so I might try to access some of the content that I need and that has partially worked. I set the Stand prefs to not auto load Flash and to ask me if I want to load Flash content in each instance. The pages load and are not hanging and I get a little box that tells me to click if I want to load Flash content. HuffPo, Youtube, even Facebook seems to work fine, I can click on Flash content and it plays without the spinning beach ball/freeze.
However, there is Flash content that I want to run and still can't because when I tell the Flash Plug In to load some content, it freezes the program and I get the spinning ball. Same happens to the same pages and sites in Firefox. I just updated Firefox 10 minutes ago and it didn't help. I've got Safari 4.0.4. I've been trying to load the BBC Listen Again iPlayer and it keeps freezing Safari and Firefox.
I've got OS X 10.4.11. I just checked again and there are no new OS updates for Tiger.
So any ideas? I have been dumping cache, removing the history and all that mumbo jumbo, which does not a lick of good for this issue. Like many others, since Safari 4 came out I've experienced more freezes than in all my prior years of being a Mac user. If it is an issue with Flash, will Apple deal with this? This is insane!

Answer 1

You have tried a lot of things, all correct, but have you repaired permissions since reinstalling Flash?
Repairing permissions is important, and should always be carried out both before and after any software installation or update.
Go to Disk Utility (this is in your Utilities Folder in your Application folder) and click on the icon of your hard disk (not the one with all the numbers).
In First Aid, click on Repair Permissions.
This only takes a minute or two in Tiger, but much longer in Leopard.
Background information here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25751
and here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=302672
An article on troubleshooting Permissions can be found here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2963
By the way, you can ignore any messages about SUID or ACL file permissions, as explained here:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1448?viewlocale=en_US
If you were having any serious problems with your Mac you might as well complete the exercise by repairing your hard disk as well. You cannot do this from the same start-up disk. Reboot from your install disk (holding down the C key). Once it opens, select your language, and then go to Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. Select your hard disk as before and click Repair.
Once that is complete reboot again from your usual start-up disk.
Also, how much RAM do you have? Some older G4's can struggle with today's streamed flash content.