If Firefox is crashing with a “Container Plugin” error, here’s your fix

I don’t normally send out such hard core techy info, but this is a serious problem for huge numbers of people (maybe you).  And while it might seem like a job for your expensive tech guy, it’s something you can actually fix yourself really easily.

In Firefox’s most recent upgrade (3.6.4), they’ve accidentally caused a big problem, namely that it crashes! The fix is to remove the plugin causing the problem. (They keep blaming the Adobe Flash plugin, but that’s not the real culprit, according to the chat threads I’ve been reading …)

Anyway, here’s the steps, in plain English:

Go to your browser bar (the place that lists the URL address of whatever page you’re on) and type “about:config” You’ll get a “This may void your warranty!” message. Say ok – “I’ll be careful, I promise.”This will open a long alphabetical list.

Scroll down to where it says dom.ipc.plugins.enabled.npctrl.dll. Double-click on it (or right click) and select “toggle.” This will change it from “status:default” to “status: user set” and will also change it from “value:true” to “value:false.”

Make the same change to the next 3 plugins, for a total of 4. DON’T make this change to dom.ipc.plugins (the first one) or to dom.ipc.plugins.timeoutSecs (the last one).

You’ll probably have to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect, but you should be good now!