Recently I purchased a new laptop running Windows 7 64-bit. However, many of the websites which I visit use Flash so I need to use the 32-bit version. I am suspicious that something may be wrong with the installation of Flash on my computer as when I use Internet Explorer I can no longer open any new programs as all the computer memory is consumed – I need to keep the Task Manager open and kill the IE 32 before other things will work. I am loathed to uninstall and reinstall Flash since the plug-in seems to automatically upgrade itself. Any ideas are welcome.

Before investigating this problem I need to confirm a few things regarding your question. When you say that you are using the “32-bit version” I assume that this refers to the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer which is present in Windows 7 64-bit installations. Additionally, I also assume that the process which you need to manually kill in the Task Manager is the “iexplore.exe *32” process which represents the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer which you are running. Now that we have got these assumptions out of the way we can continue to investigate the problem being experienced.

From your description of the problem it seems like high memory usage could be slowing down the computer. You didn’t mention whether this only happens when visiting web pages with Flash content, but I assume that this is the case given that you suspect something related to Flash as the cause of the issue. It is probable that you are running a very old version of Flash Player on your computer, which is likely to be the root cause, and we will discuss this possibility later. However, before going any further we need to understand some more background on this issue, particularly the need to use 32-bit vs. 64-bit Internet Explorer and the availability of a 64-bit version of Flash which could resolve the issues you are experiencing.

As most users of Windows 7 64-bit would be aware, there is a 32-bit version of Internet Explorer included. This is present to help maximise compatibility with existing add-ins (such as toolbars) for Internet Explorer since many add-ins are not 64-bit compatible, but instead require a 32-bit browser. Until recently this was also the case for Flash player, as it did not have a version completely compatible with 64-bit browsers. However, you will be glad to hear that on 4 October 2011 (so not that long ago) Adobe released Flash Player 11 which supports 64-bit browsers on Windows, Mac, and Linux. As such, you should be able to stop using the 32-bit version of Internet Explorer and move fully across to the 64-bit version.

To make the transition to the new version of Flash Player I would recommend that you first uninstall the current version of Flash Player from your computer. Go to the Start menu > “Control Panel” and select “Uninstall a program”. In the list of programs find the entry for Adobe Flash Player and uninstall this from your computer. Once the uninstallation has completed, restart the computer to clear any remaining elements of the installation. Next, open the normal 64-bit version of Internet Explorer and visit the Adobe Flash download page: get.adobe.com/flashplayer . Follow through the instructions to install Flash Player on your computer. Once this has installed, check whether you experience the same slow down on the computer when viewing pages that contain Flash-based content.

If the slow down no longer occurs (and the memory consumption of Internet Explorer remains within an acceptable range) then I would put the previous behaviour down to potentially something wrong with the Flash installation on your computer. Previously I have found some instances where Flash content can slow down the computer, but that has generally pointed towards particular Flash content on a specific website rather than all Flash content in general. It is also worthwhile pointing out that Flash does not automatically upgrade itself but instead notifies you that an upgrade is available and offers you the ability to download the latest version. However, this notification can be turned-off. If you have not seen an upgrade notification lately then it is possible this was turned-off for your installation of Flash Player and therefore you were never being notified that a new version was available. Since you have not been keen on reinstalling Flash yourself, as you were under the impression that it automatically updated, it is likely that you have not updated your Flash player since the original installation and therefore could have been running a very old version and not the latest version (which could have potentially fixed your problem, if it was related to Flash Player itself). Now that you have the latest version of Flash Player installed it would be worthwhile checking that the upgrade notifications are enabled to ensure that you receive such notifications. Visit the following webpage: www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager05.html . This has a piece of Flash content on the page which will actually show you the settings for your installation of Flash on the computer. When you visit this page the settings manager should be on the “Global Notification Settings” page. Make sure that “Notify me when an update to Adobe Flash Player is available” is ticked and you should probably check for updates every 7 days, which is the default setting.

In the situation that the slow down still happens using the 64-bit version of Flash Player and Internet Explorer then we should look whether the same problem happens in different browsers. Some users have reported that Flash operates slowly in particular browsers, but runs fine in other browsers. As a first troubleshooting step download Mozilla Firefox (www.mozilla.com/firefox) which is an excellent free, open-source web browser. Alternatively, you may also want to try Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) which is another very good web-browser. If the problem does not occur in either of these browsers then there seems to be an issue with Flash and Internet Explorer on your computer. Unfortunately this will be a fairly complex problem to troubleshoot without access to your computer, as there could be many reasons for this occurring. In this case I would recommend staying with the new web browser that does not suffer from the problem. Additionally, I recommend both Firefox and Chrome as two of the best web-browsers for the Windows platform, given that they are compliant with many of the latest web standards (so they should render web-pages quite well), lightweight and quick, and also updated often (meaning that they include many emerging web-standards, allowing you to view web pages which use these new standards and gain the full benefits).