Shockwave keeps crashing. What can I do to fix it?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #66, I look at a computer with Shockwave that is crashing
regularly.

Shockwave crashing

Well, my first recommendation, actually, is probably not very obvious.
Uninstall Shockwave and don’t reinstall it.

In reality, what’s happened is: Shockwave is being used by fewer and fewer
sites on the internet. Most people just don’t need it. There’s simply no reason
to have it on your machine.

So that’s the very first thing I would do is: I would uninstall it,
uninstall it completely; either in “Add/remove Programs,” or
in your browser’s add-ons, or both. Like I said, Shockwave just isn’t something
I expect most people are needing from day to day.

Needing Shockwave

If you’re one of those exceptions… there are still some old game sites,
and so forth, that actually implement their games using Shockwave. What I would
do in your case is:

• I would completely uninstall it;

• I would fire up Revo
  Uninstaller to essentially force a more thorough uninstall of the program,
  and of the add-ons.

• I would make sure that the add-ons have been uninstalled from both of your
  browsers;

• And then, I would reinstall it from scratch, from a fresh
  download.

The problem might very well be that uninstalling it (whatever techniques
you’ve been using in the past) may not have been uninstalling absolutely
everything, and may have been leaving some traces that are causing it to be
confused when it gets reloaded.

Reinstall the browsers

The other approach that I might take would be to actually uninstall both of
the browsers as well. It is possible that the uninstall of Shockwave, again,
isn’t complete. It may have left something that is confusing the browsers to
the point where the only way to solve that problem would be to uninstall and
reinstall the browsers themselves.

That is pretty extreme and that’s why I list it last. I’m hoping, I’m
actually really hoping that you don’t need Shockwave and you can simply
uninstall it.

Shockwave and Flash

To clarify, you’ll often see the terms Shockwave and Flash used
together.

As it turns out, they are not related. They are two separate things.

While it is very common to need Flash for various things, like viewing
movies or any number of other random dynamic things on the internet, Shockwave,
just isn’t really being used in that same way – and to that degree.

So I would definitely avoid it if at all possible. Uninstall and see if that
doesn’t just work for you.