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April 22nd, 2006

Firefox 1.5 - Illegal Operation in Plug-in (Shockwave Flash)


Lately it seems like every say 1 in 10 pages I visit Firefox pops up this error:

Illegal Operation in Plug-in
————————-
The Plug-in performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Firefox.
[ ] Don’t show this message again during this session.
—-
OK

Here’s a picture.
Illegal Operation in Plug-in

This forum post sounds like the answer so go knock yourself out. (It sounded like too much work for me this morning so I’m going to just keep clicking the OK button :-( )

Update:
I tryed the instructions from the link above and didn’t have any luck, but here are a few other advice pages to try:
(translated from French!)
Problem with Plugin “Shockwave Flash”
The plugin carried out an illegal operation

Update Update:
Give Hugo’s advice in the comment below a try. It certainly sounds promising.

Update Update Update:
Lukpuk comments below that it may be a virus. He reccomends to run msinfo32.exe and find something weird in loaded modules or autorun. Then try to delete a virus in windows/system32/ (He used Hijack this) during the boot.

Posted by Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) in Firefox

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Firefox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the comments RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

70 Responses to “Firefox 1.5 - Illegal Operation in Plug-in (Shockwave Flash)”

  1. lycia says:

    I’m having exactly the same problem, and, worst of that is that after showing several time that error message, my Firefox suddenly shuts down! Did you find any great idea to fix the problem?

    Thank you!

    May 14th, 2006 at 3:45 am
  2. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Lycia,

    I’m still trying to solve this thing. I’m mostly just trying to live with it :-( My browser doesn’t shut down let yours.

    If I do get it solved I’ll be sure to post an update here.

    May 14th, 2006 at 10:40 am
  3. Gary Newell says:

    This is actually poor coding on the websites.

    The problem is this….

    More and more people are trying to move over to the xhtml format of creating webpages.

    The downside of this is that the tag is not supported by XHTML.

    Coders are therefore using a hack with the tag to get around this so that their pages validate properly.

    Unfortunately without the tag the pluginspage property cannot be set properly which causes the error displayed above on your firefox browser.

    Therefore the problem is caused by 1 of the following three sets of people.

    1…. The W3C standards who deem that the embed tag is not fit for use even though netscape based browsers such as Firefox use it.

    2…. Firefox and Netscape based browsers that do not incorporate the use of the object tag properly.

    3…. The coders for using XHTML as a standard that will not allow the embed tag to be used. They should use HTML 4.01 standards.

    May 25th, 2006 at 8:56 am
  4. Gary Newell says:

    sorry in some places my text doesn’t make sense because I used a tag instead of a statement. Basically the word embed should be inserted whereever it doesn’t make sense.

    May 25th, 2006 at 8:57 am
  5. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Thanks for the info, Gary. I hope one of those parties fixes it soon. So according to your explanation every user of Firefox is currently getting this error on certain pages?

    That’s pretty sucky.

    May 25th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
  6. Tanzim says:

    Hi Folks!

    Take a look at http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=397661 for possible solutions.

    Cheers.

    May 31st, 2006 at 6:27 pm
  7. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Tanzim, that’s the same link as from my post. Did the advice there work for you? I’ll have to try those instructions again.

    May 31st, 2006 at 9:02 pm
  8. Brendan says:

    Would it have anything to do with the version of Mozilla? Maybe if you download and install an earlier version of Firefox it will be ok. My other home pc is running an older release of Firefox and it has never had this issue before, its only happened on my new pc.

    June 9th, 2006 at 10:49 am
  9. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Brendan,

    You are probably correct. In fact about a week ago my Firefox upgraded itself to version 1.5.0.4 and I haven’t seen this message since.

    June 9th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
  10. Brendan says:

    I also have 1.5.0.4 and i still get the error unfortunately. Does anyone else find it makes it impossible to view videos? For example on YouTube. It might get halfway through the video and then freeze, meaning you have to close the browser, ctrl+alt+del then end the firefox process before your allowed to open it again.

    June 9th, 2006 at 8:30 pm
  11. Tony says:

    yup its horrible i cant watch videos streamed of course and now i got a security center pop up which shuts down my windows media player only thing i can use with no problem is VLC but i wanna watch g4tv dot com this is bull damn

    “firefox i used to love thee why have thou forsaken me” *plunges knife into chest* “ughhhhh” *thump*

    June 29th, 2006 at 12:03 am
  12. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Tony,

    I don’t know why Firefox has forsaken us. It’s odd, this problem stopped happening for me about two weeks ago and it just started again tonight. This is by far the most inconvienient Firefox bug I’ve seen.

    June 29th, 2006 at 12:20 am
  13. Drag says:

    I sorted it out. If Firefox hasn’t got a sollution I have it. Just go to Add and Remove Programs and uninstall Firefox.

    July 8th, 2006 at 2:53 am
  14. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Drag, ha ha, that’s certainly one solution! I suppose I should file a bug report on Firefox if there isn’t one already. (Instead of just complaining about it ;-)

    Opera looks better every day. If they had a switch from Firefox wizard to import bookmarks, toolbar bookmarks, cookies, passwords, and etc. I might have switched already.

    (My long term solution to this bug is to switch to ubuntu, especially since I actually suspect this message is somehow being caused by a spyware. Just a hunch I have.)

    July 8th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
  15. Hugo says:

    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Flash_plugin

    Try this information I did some research because I had the same problem.

    Illegal Operation In Plug-In
    If certain web pages cause “Illegal Operation In Plug-In” errors that refer to “Shockwave Flash” and contain the message,
    The plugin performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Navigator (or Firefox):
    The Mozilla ActiveX plugin can cause these errors. Removing the ActiveX plugin ( see above) may resolve a potential conflict and stop the errors.
    Removing the files “GetFlash.exe” and “GetFlash.exe.manifest” from the browser’s installation directory plugins folder may stop the errors.
    Uninstalling Flash 8 and installing the latest version of Flash 7 is reported to fix the problem [5] but you should first see if updating to the newly-released Flash Player 9 stops the errors.

    July 14th, 2006 at 9:13 am
  16. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Thanks Hugo. This sounds promising. Did it work for you?
    I’m still planning on my ultimate fix (switching to Ubuntu) but I’d like to hear from people if this fix works for everyone.

    July 14th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
  17. Denver Dave says:

    I have started getting the Illegal Operation in Plug-in Windows Media Plug-in Dynamic Link Ligrary when running the videos on www.CNN.com using Firefox. This is a new occurance and as far as I know I do not get the error when running the embedded wmv files on any other website. Anyone else get this error on CNN?

    July 17th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
  18. nick says:

    ok, this may be a help to any programers, to make the problem worse all you have to do is delete the “shockwaveplugin.class” from the plugins folder

    July 18th, 2006 at 3:30 pm
  19. andras says:

    This page also suffers from Illegal Operation in the Flash plug-in:

    www.index.hu

    Tried reinstalling firefox and flash, but no effect. Do I have to go back to IE???

    August 13th, 2006 at 10:49 am
  20. Nisse Bergman says:

    I had this problem on alot of sites with shockwave, but only on my home-laptop. My work-laptop is all good and never freezes (this is the most common version of the bug, at least i think its the same) or illigal-operating. It seems as the plugin collides with some other ActiveX plugin and stops getting updates or compleatly crashes with the illigal operation window. Ive tested the new Flash player 9 and the new shockwave 10.1.3.r18 but it doesnt help. Someone got to fix this.

    August 17th, 2006 at 8:37 am
  21. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    I’ve switched to Ubuntu and that fixed the problem for me (a bit of a drastic solution, I know).

    Has anyone filed a bug report for this?

    August 17th, 2006 at 9:48 am
  22. lukpuk says:

    Guys its a virus. Try to run msinfo32.exe and find something weird in loaded modules or autorun. Then try to delete a virus in windows/system32/ (I used Hijack this) during the boot.

    September 5th, 2006 at 11:22 am
  23. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Thanks Lukpuk, that actually makes a lot of sense. I wonder why I never thought of that? Come to think of it, this problem did did when I started getting pop-up messages on my computer.

    September 5th, 2006 at 11:41 am
  24. Mike Allen says:

    I had the same problem with the illegal shockwave operation pop up. I went to Sockwave’s web page and downloaded the latest software for Shockwave 9. It has Firefox listed as a supported browser. I insyalled the software and no longer get the pop up. It worked great for me and was easy to do. Maybe it will for you too.

    September 5th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
  25. Mike Allen says:

    Sorry about that. I meant to say I downloaded Shockwave 10 from the Adobe Shockwave download center. This software supports the Firefox browser.

    Now, no more pop ups about an illegal operation.

    September 5th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
  26. Ulf Nilsson says:

    lukpuk
    Could you be more specific? What the virus is named? I can´t find anything weird in msinfo32.exe.

    Mike Allen
    Is says nothing about being compatible with Firefox. But it still is?

    September 9th, 2006 at 9:37 am
  27. Dave says:

    Okay so this is driving me nuts.
    I’ve tried unisntalled and reinstalled 8 and 9 many many times following the instructions for uninstallation.
    What my solution WAS to the problem was going the Flash Player 7 route and using that for firefox.
    Unfortunately every time I went to a site using macromedia flash player 8 or 9 it wouldn’t play the video. So I had to switch my rendering engine to IE.
    Problem is (besides it being a PITA to switch the rendering engine and wait for the page to reload), now my IE rendering engine extension isn’t gonna cut it for the myspace vids I try to watch and stuff like that.
    They use Macromedia Flash Player 9 I believe, and in order for me to view the vid (and I MUST view this vid X_X) I need to have flash player 9, or else it won’t matter if I use IE tabs (which I guess allow me to watch flash player 8 videos and..yeah…not really sure how that works).
    So basically I need to FIX the problem with the NEWEST version of flashplayer 9, if possible.
    I doubt downgrading to an earlier version of firefox would work but who knows…
    And I’m not sure what lukpuk is saying to do exactly…I go to Start> Run and then enter msinfo32.exe correct? When that happens it brings up a “System Information” window and in that window I see various things about my computer such as it’s OS system, version, name, maunfacturer etc and THEN I also see the forementioned windows/system32/ next to “System directory”.
    But when I click on it ( C:/WINDOWS/system32 ) it doesn’t take me anywhere else…it does nothing…so ya…
    Please, any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

    September 12th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
  28. Juice says:

    1.5.0.7 fixed it for me!

    September 15th, 2006 at 1:17 am
  29. Ulf Nilsson says:

    1.5.0.7
    Did not fix it för me.
    It still f-cks up when flash are used. For me I often visit pages like Aftonbladet (www.aftonbladet.se) and then flash preforms the illegal action.
    Also it chrashes often a short vile after that.

    September 18th, 2006 at 11:48 am
  30. Dave says:

    OMFGosh! I can’t believe that 1.5.0.7 actually fixed it! ()_()
    I’ve just tested a few sites that it would usually spaz out on and give me teh EVIL message that it does but it didn’t! YAY for me!
    It is kinda sad though cuz I just spent the last few days totally pimping out my opera and stuff.
    But firefox is better! YAY!!

    September 18th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
  31. Dave says:

    Oy…So I’ve been using 1.5.0.7 for a few days now and I’m still getting the popup that firefox has perfomed an illegal flash operation but…it doesn’t always mean I have to restart firefox…so pretty much it pops up…but…doesn’t do anything?
    Ugh, I dunno what the heck’s up with it now…hoepfully it won’t turn into the huge problem I had with 1.5.0.6…

    September 20th, 2006 at 9:46 pm
  32. bah says:

    reinstalled ff ffs! uninstalled all flash plugins and nothing, same shit still going on!

    September 25th, 2006 at 9:43 pm
  33. gah says:

    Just started for me today. Really annoying. I am thinking it is spyware/ viral because I have had no issues prior to this day.

    September 26th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
  34. Juice says:

    .0.7 seemed to fix it at first, but now it’s still doing the same crap. I may have to agree with gah about it being a malware issue, because I copied the same exact folder of Firefox onto my laptop, and it has no such error.

    September 28th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
  35. Jimmy Kudo says:

    I have the same message, except that I think whatever error it is, it caused the browser unable to access to flash sites! Whenever I tried to enter flash sites, the browser stop responding! This is nightmare!

    October 6th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
  36. Captainjp says:

    I’ve tried versions 7,8,&9 of Flash and even FireFox 2.0 still no improvements.

    October 8th, 2006 at 11:59 am
  37. Duffy says:

    Installing the new shockwave worked for me and messed around with a bunch of other things. CNN videos also did not work for me.

    Shockwave: http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi

    October 8th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
  38. Ulf Nilsson says:

    OK.
    I finally fixed it. At least for now.
    And it was a virus or similar.

    I ran SUPERAntiSpyware, and after that I have no problems.

    Good luck guys.

    October 10th, 2006 at 4:09 am
  39. Bill says:

    This started after the wife caught a virus on myspace.
    superantispyware, avg antispy, search n destroy, spysweeper, symantec etc all found stuff.
    Still crashing on 8 or higher. but needed 9 for some sites.
    Tried that blacklight rootkit revealer, and no problems since..
    I suggest you try that one.

    October 13th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
  40. Tom says:

    I have had this problem for about 4 months now…i have unistalled flash…and tried every version…i have uninstalled firefox, and tried every version up to 2.0 …I cant fix it… but i really need to so i can watch u-tube again!!!…so ya…maybe someone will figure it out

    November 25th, 2006 at 12:59 am
  41. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Hi there Tom,

    I think the general consensus is that this is caused by some sort of malware. Try all of the reccomendations in the comments here, and if that doesn’t work, reinstall Windows.

    November 25th, 2006 at 1:08 am
  42. cramapple says:

    IE was hi-jacked and sent me to the wrong pages. Flash crashed Firefox. Here’s what I did. I got me a copy of blacklight root kit eliminator Ran it and found 2 files in C:\Windows|System32
    csgnj.exe
    dbct.exe
    They were rather well hidden, so I re-booted in linux and tried to delete or rename them and it wouldn’t let me.
    Re-booted in windows. Ran Blacklight again. Same two files showed up as csklo.exe and dmtwc.exe.
    Used the “remame” function in Blacklight. Re-boot.
    Both problems solved.
    Hope that helps somebody.

    December 3rd, 2006 at 1:17 pm
  43. fatbaldingoldgit says:

    I have had the same problem including being redirected to wrong web sites in Firefox. I ran blacklight root kit eliminator. Discovered the well hidden file kdkpq.exe in System32. I renamed it using the function in blacklight and everything was fixed after the reboot.

    Tricky little misleading problem now solved thanks to you guys…

    December 4th, 2006 at 5:55 am
  44. Mr. No says:

    I had the same problem for a while, and I was on the edge of switching to Opera or something. Some of the treads here however mentioned a virus infection, so I decided to dig in deeper. I used first the SpyBot and also the SuperAntiSpyware to remove files that they found. After that I used the above mentioned blacklight root kit eliminator to rename the two files it found, and after that I installed the newest Shockwave version. Everything seems to be solved now. Not only that, but my PC seems to be working somewhat faster now. Maybe it is too early to say, but I’ve been watching the YouTube videos for half hour now and not a single problem (used to freeze when I start a video). Good Luck to all, and thanks for the useful advice.

    December 4th, 2006 at 6:11 am
  45. Arie says:

    Okay, I know most of you might use firefox, but this is now occuring for anyone with Netscape. I downloaded Shockwave Flash to be able to play more games, etc. Now I keep getting the same stupid report “Shockwave Flash has…” blah blah blah

    I have uninstalled flash and still…no cure. My friend is a computer genius and he gave up. I am now unable to go to most of my normal websites and have no idea what to do. Once the error report comes up, my internet shuts down.

    Anyone with step by step instruction for how to solve this problem, help me please! I’m not that clever with this sort of thing and am in need of severe help!

    ~Arie~

    December 5th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
  46. Daniel says:

    I’m having a big problem……

    Illegal Operation in Plug-in (Shockwave flash)
    The Plug-in performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Firefox.
    [ ] Don’t show this message again during this session.
    —-
    OK

    Please help ….
    I tried everything.
    I downloaded flash player 7 -didn’t work,
    I downloaded shockwave player- didn’t work,
    Also Superanti spyware and doesn’t work.

    It’s mainly when you watch vids on sites like
    youtube.com
    google vids
    Myspace
    Bebo
    AND etc.

    ~Daniel~

    December 7th, 2006 at 9:52 am
  47. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Daniel,

    If you don’t feel comfortable trying the various advice left in the comments e.g, virus scans, root kit revealers, you’ll probably need to reinstall Windows. And definately get help with that if you don’t feel comfortable there too.

    December 7th, 2006 at 10:53 am
  48. Artist says:

    Were all of you using emule ???

    December 7th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
  49. Eric says:

    This happened to me on my girlfriend’s computer yesterday.
    Firefox 2, Flash 10, newest Windows Media Player.

    Norton found nothing, Spybot found nothing, AdAware found nothing.

    I read elsewhere it may be a trojan called Gromozon, so I downloaded something that finds it specifically. ( www.prevx.com/gromozon ), but it said that Gromozon wasn’t on the computer.

    I ran House Call and it actually found a few things but the problem persisted.

    My girlfriend ran a great program call The Cleaner and it found seven instances of a particular trojan…..but the problem still exists.

    Since it started out of nowhere, I doubt it’s a software conflict…why would that happen out of nowhere like that? This is why we haven’t yet tried to uninstall/reinstall anything yet.
    I’ll delete those Flash files, but what I’m afraid of is that there is something bad on the computer and the “problem” stops (after deleting those Flash .exe files), but is still in there. I don’t know if that could happen, but this thing is making me paranoid.

    I guess I’ll run more anti spyware I haven’t tried yet and delete those Flash .exe’s.
    I’m a little leary of Blacklight, because honestly I don’t like doing/running things that I don’t understand at all.
    I always worry whenever I do something like this on a computer I’ll screw it up more and there will be no turning back.
    Perhaps setting the computer on fire will help.

    I hope we can get this sorted out, it’s driving me crazy and stressing me out…

    December 8th, 2006 at 12:34 am
  50. Eric says:

    Alright. All’s well so far.

    So, now I understand something.
    A “rootkit” is a form of malware that basically hides down deep and disguises what it is and helps disguise other malware/viruses.
    Thus programs like Blacklight and Sophos Anti-Rootkit see them for what they are and renames them so they can be seen. But that’s not all, I guess. I’m assuming, correctly I imagine, that that only gits rid of the “rustling of the leaves” and not the killer behind the bush.
    After running such a program, as it seems many of you have with success thank goodness, make sure you run your anti virus and anti spyware programs too to make sure nothing else is lurking.

    So apparantly Flash is particularly vulnerable to rootkits, hence the “illegal operation” message we were all getting. Hopefully there will come an update soon for Shockwave that will help close the doors a bit tighter.

    I’d never heard of rootkits. I hate to say it, but I’m glad this mess happened to me so that I learned something at least.

    I ran a quick scan in Norton and ran SpyBot and still have found nothing.
    I REALLY have to sleep, so I’ll do a deeper, more thorough check tomorrow upon awaking and let you all know what’s what.

    If you’re still having problems with this, download and use Blacklight or Sophos, then check your computer after. That should fix it right up.

    Good luck, everyone.

    December 8th, 2006 at 2:21 am
  51. Daniel says:

    I’m still not having any luck.
    And Root kit and virus checker don’t do nothing to get rid of that stupid pop up.

    It only mainly happens when your in any video site and I want to watch vids on youtube and bebo.

    Like google video’s works now.And youtube only plays couple of secs and every vid freezes but the internet is still running.And when I typed in the address bar that stupid lame annoying pop up keeps coming up when it froze.VERY WEIRD.

    And virus checkers and Root kit don’t do nothing because when I start it.It turns out that my computer says NOT RESPONDING.So they don’t do crap.

    So the only thing left I could do and it might work is to wipe everything on the computer.

    December 8th, 2006 at 4:30 am
  52. Daniel says:

    And this might be a new virus we never encountered before.

    Like all the site’s works but only vid site’s don’t work.
    LOL…..SO LAME

    December 8th, 2006 at 4:35 am
  53. Greg Pinero (Primary Searcher) says:

    Eric, thanks for the information. Glad you didn’t have to set your computer on fire.

    Daniel, reinstalling Windows may be the way to go. I’ve always figured a reality of running Windows is that you have to reinstall it every so often. What I’ve been doing to make this process less painful is to take a disc image every so often so I can simply restore the whole OS back to that point. I’ll have to do a post about how I do that. Of course this will only help you in the future, and not in this case.

    December 8th, 2006 at 11:08 am
  54. mark says:

    I had the same prob for weeks, right after i dnlwnd morpeus and my anti virus registered a virus. I have a back up drive that i keep my installs on…. It is
    A VIRUS! Reinstall XP took me 15 mins… or deal with it, it started to take over I.E and my EXCEL.. giving me fatal errors and my cpu was running all the time at 100%\ bring up the task manager and look for running progs I had none besides the ones I needed and I was clocking 100% for no reason…. VIRUS!!!!!
    Reinstall win xp….. FIXED the PROB… I now watch YOU TUBE ……….NO ISSUES

    December 10th, 2006 at 12:24 am
  55. Amy says:

    omg i’ve had this problem for so long. uninstalling and re-installing firefox and the shockwave player. so far, no success. i’ve already deleted that GetFlash.exe and still nothing.

    how do you reinstall windows xp? so do you lose all of your information, documents, and programs you’ve installed?

    December 28th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
  56. adam says:

    well, it’s driving me nuts as well.
    i think so far the best solution for us unlucky types is deinstalling the flash player - from windows remove in controll panel, then deleting all the files that (if they do) remain, then reboooting and downloading the flash player 7 version. so far it is working for me.
    from my point of view it’s a major shame that this problem hasn’t been solved yet.
    or maybe they are too great perfectionists - so even a small problem causes the plugin to hang?
    shame, shame. wish i could program though

    January 17th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
  57. Miss Lady says:

    Yeah. I’m having the same problem. It just happened to me 3 minutes ago. WTF?

    January 20th, 2007 at 9:53 pm
  58. eleanna says:

    I don’t think it’s a virus, but rather a compatibility issue between flash player and the version of Firefox you are using. What worked for me was to go to this page: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=d9c2fe33
    and install the earlier version 7 of flash player. Scroll down till u find the file:
    Netscape: Download (696 K)
    and install it.

    February 28th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
  59. Ryan says:

    This is just spyware/adaware

    i get this EVERYTIME i goto a site to get a crack for a program.

    My solution is always system recovery, to about a day before it happened, other then that, nothing ever works, the most annoying virus/spyware/adware/ or whatever the hell it is.

    March 6th, 2007 at 7:53 pm
  60. Mike in Maine says:

    This happened to me when I was playing my songs on the www.Soundclick.com website. I was in Firefox (which I had just installed). The soundclick site pop up (”puzzle piece”) said “click here to download plugin”, so I did. Problem began then and continues.

    In “My computer” files I found the plugin: npswf32.d ii and removed it. Doesn’t help. Welcome any new news on repairing this. Thanks!

    April 4th, 2007 at 10:09 am
  61. joey says:

    hi… i do have a problem when i was browsing some website.. and it always pop up the ” the plug-in performed an illegal operation. you are strongly advised to restart firefox.”

    however, when i browsing other website .. it won’t pop up this message… so, is this mean there is an virus or spyware? thanks!!

    September 18th, 2007 at 5:50 am
  62. Matt says:

    ***ELEANNA’S FIX WORKS!!! TRY THIS EASY FIX BEFORE DOING ANYTHING DRASTIC!!!***

    “eleanna says:

    I don’t think it’s a virus, but rather a compatibility issue between flash player and the version of Firefox you are using. What worked for me was to go to this page: http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/knowledgebase/index.cfm?id=d9c2fe33
    and install the earlier version 7 of flash player. Scroll down till u find the file:
    Netscape: Download (696 K)
    and install it. ”

    Thank you Eleanna! I was getting this error for ever and after installing Flash 7 for Netscape it stopped right away. It might not work for everyone if there really is a virus out there causing the same issue, but trust me try it. Only took a minute and fixed it right away. Eleanna you rock!

    October 25th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
  63. John says:

    worked for me too.
    Thank you for posting the link and instructions Eleanna.

    November 6th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
  64. dan says:

    find this folder go to my computer c drive then program files look for mozilla firefox the plug in’s C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\plugins. Now find npmozax.dll rename it to “xnpmozax.dll problem fixed. It disables active x. Hope it works for you like it did or me.

    November 18th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
  65. Credit Card Reviews and Financial Advise says:

    What worked for me was to go to ADOBE SHOCKWAVE download latest… then restart firefox now i dont get it..

    its not a virus, otherwise it would have continued

    November 28th, 2007 at 10:40 am
  66. try this... says:

    my browser stopped freezing

    November 29th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
  67. Dooby says:

    Hi all,

    I was getting the same illegal plugin error through firefox. I was also having some problems with other programs at the same time. I recently installed some new 1GB DDR2 RAM, so I took the chips out one at a time and found that one chip was bad. With that particular RAM stick in, I get the error every time. With it out, the box runs flawlessly. Hope this helps anyone that may be getting the same error.a

    November 30th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
  68. Pam Savateer says:

    how do i get rid of this annoying thing pls advise im 62 trs ols and can make my own decisions about what i want to watch

    December 5th, 2007 at 7:03 am
  69. Ian says:

    I have a work around that stops ffox and my PC crashing :)
    I’ve been struggling with this flash/ffox problem ages too, not all sites with flash bring up the error message though.

    I now have latest adobe flash and ffox but still get the problem (not tried flash 7). I suspected a memory prob but extensive mem tests have found nothing.
    I have recently discovered that ffox was hogging the CPU and taking up large amounts of memory. I did a google for this ptoblem and came across this site
    http://robertlindsay.blogspot.com/2006/07/fix-for-nasty-firefox-cpu-bug.html

    This guy says that adobe flash memory leaks etc. so I took his advice and installed the ffox flashblock extension

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/433

    Now my CPU is no longer hogged by ffox and it doesn’t crash my PC.

    Ian

    February 26th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
  70. Mike says:

    PS, This can happen when you try editing memory in a flash game or a game off a website with things like “ART MONEY” or something like that. JUST MY INPUT THANKS,
    MIKE

    April 24th, 2008 at 2:08 am