SillyDog701

[dmssildog]

All of a sudden, my Shockwave/flash plugin stopped working in Netscape 7.1. I have version 6.0 rev 79 (I believe) and it had worked error-free for at least six months until earlier this week, when every site with flash content including ads, would generate a "Shockwave/Flash performed an illegal operation and had to be shut down" message.

I downloaded the uninstaller, uninstalled Shockwave/Flash from my machine, then downloaded and installed the latest version (7.0 r19). It worked fine yesterday, but now any site with flash content will lock Netscape up and I have to force quit the browser.

My IE 6.0 continues to work fine on Flash sites, both with the 6.xx plugin and now with 7.0 r19.

How do I fix it with Netscape?

There appear to be lots of people with this problem, based on postings on usenet - but for some reason, almost none of the posts draw responses. I am hoping this forum can offer some suggestions that fix the problem.

My computer, by the way, is swept twice a week each by Norton Antivirus, Ad-Aware, and Spybot, each with the most up-to-date reference file available. It's clean.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Fulvio]

Could you, please, give an example? I needed to install Macromedia v.7 for one site. It failed for another reason, but I was just watching Canada's Radio3, http://www.cbcradio3.com/issues/2004_04_30/index.cfm which is heavy in Flash, and had no problem.
Since it was not requested, I installed v.7 on top of version 6.
My Netscape7.1 Plugins folder has a GetFlash.exe Flash Playrer updater, and file NPSWF32.dll v.7.0.19.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

[dmssildog]

Well, an example would be any page with flash content, including the ads that display on several web sites (yahoo mail to name one). I guess the best example would be the macromedia page that the flash installer visits after completing. I *think* http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/ is the page.

C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Plugins - that is my plugins folder, right? - had getflash.exe and the dll you'd mentioned, but now that I've uninstalled the flash plugin, the dll is gone.

Again:

1. The issue is with Netscape 7.1 only; IE 6.0 works fine.

2. The error I got last year and yesterday was a message saying "Shockwave/Flash performed an illegal operation and had to be shut down"

3. Now I don't get that error message. Instead, Netscape just locks up. I can move the mouse pointer, but the menus and buttons in the browser don't work, I can't type in a location bar or click on the links on a page, and have to ctrl-alt-delete and close Netscape that way.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Alice]

I got no hits searching groups.google.com on "Shockwave/Flash performed an illegal operation and had to be shut down" (except for one post on netscape.public.mozilla.general today, yours?) so I am willing to bet that is not the exact error message.

If you have tweakui and have enabled a faultlog.txt then open it and copy the error message details. Otherwise, next time you get the error, click the Details button and write down the beginning of the error message,
which would be something in the form of
"netscp caused an invalid page fault in module netscp.exe or at xxxx:xxxxxxxx"

Once you give an exact error message I can do a groups.google.com search on it to see if anyone else has reported it.

Internet Explorer uses an activeX control, not a plugin, and you could be using a different version of flash.ocx or SWflash.ocx in IE. C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Plugins folder should include NPSWF32.dll which would show up in Netscape Help about:plugins as Shockwave Flash and then the version number, for example, 7.0 r19 and your Netscape\Netscape\componenets folder should contain flashplayer.xpt

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

[dmssildog]

Okay, I looked through some old notes. I guess the exact quote is "Shockwave Flash: The plugin performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Navigator"

That's not relevant at the moment, because now if I go to a site with ANY flash content, Netscape locks up as described above.

I do have faultlog.txt enabled in tweakui, but can't find the existence of a file with that name on my computer. Where would it be located?

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Alice]

I'm not on my Win9x machine now but I believe it is in C:\Windows. Do a Find, Files and folders, on faultlog.txt

I did another groups.google search based on the new error message and found the following. Looks like you might have had some plugin file conflict. I would open the Netscape\Netscape\Plugins folder and DELETE or rename the npswf32.dll file, also delete or rename the flashplayer.xpt in the components folder, then reinstall Flash 7.

=============copy/paste===================
From: Roy Smith (rasmith1959@charter.net)
Subject: Re: Shockwave Error
Newsgroups: netscape.public.mozilla.general
Date: 2004-01-19 12:54:41 PST

(snip)
|
| Just downloaded and installed Mozilla 1.6, looks great but have one
| small annoyance. Whenever I go to a website that uses Macromedia
| Shockwave, I get an error message that says:
|
| "The plugin performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to
| restart Navigator."
|
| and then it also has a tick box for telling Mozilla to not show that
| dialog again during this session. I've attached the screen
| 'about:plugins' that Mozilla shows when that is typed into the address
| bar. Any ideas?
|>
|>
| I get the same error since attempting to upgrade to Flash 7. Maybe
| someone can shed some light on this.

I figured it out myself.... went into the Mozilla/plugins folder and
deleted all of the files in there and reinstalled all the software again
(Macromedia Flash, Shockwave, Realplayer, Acrobat Reader). Took care of the problem and fixed another problem I had but hadn't mentioned earlier.
=============end copy/paste================

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

[dmssildog]

Thanks Alice for the help.

Regarding faultlog.txt, it's not on my machine. Did the search, C:, subfolders included, nothing.

I have solved the problem for now by doing a scanreg/restore back to a date before the problem occurred. I have the 7.0 rev 19 or 29 or whatever it is, and the macromedia site referenced above now works for me.

I cannot imagine what kind of stuff someone, probably my kids, put on the machine to cause the problems to occur. It was able to get by all the virus and spyware checkers on the machine.

Incidentally, I found the thread you listed above, but that solution did not work for me.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Alice]

I wouldn't have thought of restoring an earlier registry. I would first have suspected a plugin version conflict... and to fix I would have deleted the offending plugin files, next reinstall flash.

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you got it fixed.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

[Fulvio]

I have WinXP, and, it is possible that version 7 is not compatible with Win98.
The plugin files are only for Netscape, Mozillas(firefox also), and Opera.
So IE would not be affected. The latest version is rev.19.
The system requirements are: * 600 MHz Intel Pentium III processor or equivalent
* Windows 98 SE (4.10.2222 A), Windows 2000, or Windows XP
* 128 MB RAM (256 MB recommended)
* 275 MB available disk space

This tells me that win98 is not included.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)

[Alice]

Good catch Fulvio

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

[Fulvio]

But, I am not so sure. It is true that it is limited to Win98SE for Authoring. When I scrolled down the page, I saw that Win98 was ok for playback.
The type of error is consistent with looking for something which is not there, and not quite correct.
I had, once a problem very similar when I tried to use a Mozilla with the incorrect ActiveX plugin. npmozax.dll should be version 1.0.0.4.
The same plugin if found in Moz1.5 or 1.6 will give grief, but will not lock up Netscape or Mozilla, but will not allow the particular function to proceed.
It may not be the same thing, but, worth throwing around.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040206 Firefox/0.8

[Alice]

But, I am not so sure. It is true that it is limited to Win98SE for Authoring. When I scrolled down the page, I saw that Win98 was ok for playback.

OK, then. bad catch

After I posted I decided to have a look for myself and found
the system requirements at http://www.macromedia.com/software/flas ... ystemreqs/

Like you said just now, any version of Win98 should be OK for playback. The higher requirement is for authoring.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win95; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040113

[dmssildog]

Okay, it's been 16 hours or so since I last posted. Here's what happened in the interim:

1. After my last post yesterday, flash again stopped working. I'd done a scanreg/restore to about ten days before and this had, momentarily, made things okay.

2. I uninstalled flash, then reinstalled 6.0 r79 (I save almost all installers on my computer). This worked for the rest of yesterday.

3. Side issue - the scanreg/restore had caused a conflict with my NAV, but I was able to fix that using tips from Symantec's site.

4. Started my computer this morning and, yup, same set of problems. Specifically, if I go to a flash site, Netscape locks up. Pressing ctrl/alt/delete shows Netscape "not responding."

This is an incredible pain in the neck. I used scanregw on Saturday right before turning the computer off. The registry was fine, and I made a backup of that version. So I'll try restoring back to that point. But again, what an unnecessary pain this is.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)

[Alice]

I had, once a problem very similar when I tried to use a Mozilla with the incorrect ActiveX plugin. npmozax.dll should be version 1.0.0.4.
The same plugin if found in Moz1.5 or 1.6 will give grief, but will not lock up Netscape or Mozilla, but will not allow the particular function to proceed.
It may not be the same thing, but, worth throwing around.

Since mozdev.org's flash faqs page, http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/faqs/flash. ... x-conflict
also mentioned possible conflict with npmozax.dll it would not hurt to DISABLE the Netscape 7.1 ActiveX plugin (C:\Program Files\Netscape\Netscape\Plugins\npmozax.dll) by RENAMING it Xnpmozax.dll

dmssildog,

You said earlier that you "downloaded the uninstaller, uninstalled Shockwave/Flash" before reinstalling Flash. I also suggested manually deleting npswf32.dll from Netscape\Plugins and and flashplayer.XPT from Netscape\components folder before downloading and reinstalling flash.

Just in case Netscape 7 is scanning for and finding npswf32.dll from other locations on your hard drive, possibly the Netscape Communicator Plugins folder if you have Netscape 4.xx installed, it wouldn't hurt to REname all copies of npswf32.dll before reinstalling flash.

Here is a link to the page where you can download and save the Flash 7 installer to your hard drive. Use Netscape to download and save the file. Then exit Netscape completely, including QuickLaunch, and disable your antivirus program before running the installer.

http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421

[Alice]

Here is another reference on the ActiveX plugin conflict:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=231272

------- Additional Comment #6 From Ian Pottinger 2004-01-30 22:38 PDT [reply] -------

I had the same problem. Visiting sites with flash (like macromedia's website) causes both mozilla and firebird to display the message

Illegal Operation in Plugin
The plugin performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Navigator.
[] Don't show me this message again during this session.
[ OK ]

When I quit Mozilla or Firebird, it crashes.

The ActiveX plugin file "npmozax.dll" caused the problem. Once I deleted it,
everything ran smoothly. Netscape 7.1, by default, installs this plugin.
Delete it and you will be fine.

The ActiveX plugin file "npmozax.dll" caused the problem. Once I deleted it, everything ran smoothly.

One more thought.

Do you by any chance have Quicktime set to open flash files? Not sure about earlier Quicktime versions but Quicktime 6.3 lets you select flash to open in the Quicktime plugin.

Go to Control Panel Quicktime, select "Browser Plugins"
and click the MIME settings button. Look under "Miscellaneous" and UNcheck flash.

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040421