Rather recently when I try to do something involving flash player (mainly youtube), I either get a blank grey block (like on youtube) or I am told that I need to download the most recent version of adobe flash player; what is weird is that when I am on that particular website, everything is fine for the first 30 minutes or so, and then I am told that I need to download adobe flash player. When I am on youtube I sometimes need to refresh the page +5 times to get it to start working. I am pretty sure that it is not a problem with firefox because I seem to have no issues when I boot into Microsoft. I am using suse 11.0.

I'm guessing you are running the latest version ? ... there were some performance issues not long ago, do you have high cpu usage when flash is active ?

I am pretty sure that I have the most recent version, and I am afraid that I have no idea how to see if I have "high cpu when flash is running." How would I check?

check the 'system follower' (my term) for cpu usage. The refresh thing is something I have come across with the bbc iplayer and seems to be linked to the length of time your system is set to standby, how you disassociate the two I don't know.

Fred.

If you open a terminal and type 'top', you will see load average at the top right. To interpret, if you have one cpu in your machine then a load average of 1.00 means your cpu is fully utilised (roughly.. the actual meaning is too technical for most people, including me). The 3 values left to right are the load over 1min, 5min and 15min periods

You can check if you're running the latest version here:
http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer

cheers

I checked on the adobe website, and it said that I have version 9. So, I tried to download the newest version, but my computer claims that I have version 10. Also, I checked the cpu thing, and it said that the load average was around .30. Do I need to change anything?

Firstly the current flashplayer status reported when on the adobe website may only be an 'estimation'. Try a search on your own system for the specified file, if you don't get a match maybe it's just a question of waiting for adobe to update their offerings. Cpu usage of .30 does not mean much to me it is always more helpful to get it in terms of a percentage but bare in mind if you get a 'snapshot' at a particular time more helpful is a graph spread over a longer time. I doubt if there is any need to panic.

fred.

Your cpu load is ok depending on what you were doing at the time, can you try running the following to confirm flash isn't damaged ?

... as long as there are only dots to the left of each file, flash is ok. If flash is ok then as fred suggested, you'll just have to wait for a new version.

cheers