Flash programs causing computer unresponsiveness.

For some reason, ever since Tuesday, some programs are causing my computer to enter a state of unresponsiveness for brief periods of time, sometimes it's split-second, sometimes, a few minutes.

Primarily this comes from running Flash programs like Youtube, in which case sometimes the whole computer screen goes hang for a minute or so, then really laggy (Like the cursor only moving once every 10 or so seconds.), then back to normal.

At first I thought it was because of me running MapleSEA after some time of not playing because Maplesea went cranky, then so did Youtube, so I ran a test, if I ran MapleSEA first (It ran perfectly.), the lag-out occurred in Youtube and other flash programs, then I tried running Youtube first, then MapleSEA, and it worked alright.

Needless to say this turned out to only be a short-term solution, sometimes the computer has this problem, sometimes it doesn't, and after it runs something heavy (Like my Microsoft Security Essential's daily 12:00PM full scan.) and the problem re-occurs, Youtube, JW Players, Flash games, all go hang-lag-o-matic on me.

Running Flash games while this problem is present results in horrible unresponsiveness and screen lag, and more often than not ending in the flash plugin crashing.

Half the time I find the solution to be just restarting the computer, though this time, I've restarted it around three times, and it's still present, and now it's officially driving me nuts what with my modem now going bitchy on me as well. I have some doubt if this is caused by malware, because MSE has been giving me all-clears so far.

P.S.: For some reason, despite Media Player being one of the more heavy stuff, it works perfectly fine.

 

1) Windows XP.
2) None. Just MSE.
3) Not connected, I just play stuff already in the computer.

Using online players for a basis, the hang and lag occurs at the start during the load video into player, if I replay, or if I go back or forward on the progress bar. Buffering and pause/play cause no lags.

As I am typing this (The computer has been on for about 20 minutes.), the lags are split-second, slow enough to be noticeable, but compared to the stuff that's been coming and going, minor.

 

Upgrade Java and Flash.

 

I'm already running the latest Java and Flash.

 

So... you're saying...

Holiday season means I should be expecting my computer to suffer excessive split-second or minute-long computer hangs?

I mean, if my browsers go 'Not Responding', or for loading a page or buffering to take an hour for a 20-minute video, I can understand it's probably just traffic , but to cause the entire computer to suffer lags and hangs just seems odd since this has never occurred to me in the previous years.

It's not that I find it hard to believe, but more of the, it seems in my household only my computer is having this lag issue, my sister just used Youtube and ran some flash programs earlier, her stuff went smooth as a whistle, same goes with my dad's laptop.

Speaking of which, I tested a few fully loaded web-players when disconnected, they still lag.

 

Based on 2 days worth of checking, the usage of Youtube uses around 1 to 35% CPU though I've seen as high as 50 once, in the event I do either click somewhere on the progress bar, or replay, it spikes to around 70-100% CPU usage. From observation of hangs and lags with the Task Manager active, whenever there's a hang or lag, the usage is topped at 100% until the screen works again.

Clicking around in web-browsers to go to another page causes 90-100% CPU spikes. Active stuff like games tend to use most of the CPU as well.

 

Oh, oops, my bad.

Then the processes in question would be plugin-container.exe and firefox.exe.

The issue in question seems to have reduced in occurrence so I've noted though.

 

I've been to that thread before when I was still using Firefox 3.6 and the plugincontainer.exe was a pain. The only reason I haven't disabled it in Firefox 8 is that it isn't causing any lags thus far and it keeps Firefox from crashing whenever Flash goes whack, except maybe for the last 2 weeks possibly, the problem seems to have disappeared yesterday, and today as well. I'm not seeing any lags or hangs so far.

Oh right, I also found some others with the same problem as I do, most point it to the plugin container using a hefty tonne of memory that causes Flash plugins to crash.