Do you know which version of Adobe Flash you're using?
shockwave plugin crash

Not much to go on here. What operating system are you running? What version of Flash are you using? What error messages or diagnostics, if any, are you seeing? Have you tried reinstalling Flash?

Tell us what OS, browser and version of shockwave plugin you are using for starters and post any error messages here verbatim, as cjsab mentioned
In the meantime make sure your OS, browser and Adobe Flash Player are 100% up-to-date.

Any chance you are running 64-bit OS? Are you running 64-bit, or 32-bit browser?
There are a few compatibility issues, AFAIK.

IM pfren are you saying when I upgrade to W8 64-bit OS I'm going to have an instant problem with Adobe's frigging Flash Player which is always out-of-date or otherwise unusable an amazingly large percentage of the times its needed?

Ok, I've done a little research on this now. It appears there is a compatibility issue between browser and Flash.
From this page
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/flash-113-crashes
Flash 11.3 crashes
Some users have reported that a recent version of Flash 11.3 is crashing more frequently than previous versions of Flash. If you are experiencing excess crashes, please try updating to the latest version of Flash. If that doesn't help, downgrading to Flash 10.3 or Flash 11.2 has been reported to work.
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/flash-113-doesnt-load-video-firefox
Flash has recently updated to version 11.3. Some users are reporting issues with this version of Flash and Firefox. The video may appear black, white or grey and never play. This article has a few solutions that have been reported to work.

When W8 will be out, there will be 64-bit versions of Firefox, Opera, Chrome and pretty much every popular browser- as well as pure 64-bit flashplugin for them. Currently only Internet Explorer is a pure 64-bit browser on the windows platform, if you want 64-bit Firefox you have to compile it yourself (which 99.5% of the users will not do).
Running a browser and the 32-bit flashplugin via the windows 7 64-bit compatibility layer does create some issues.
I do not have them, as I'm running 64-bit Linux, all the browsers I'm using are native 64-bit, and the 64-bit flashplugin.
The 64-bit Adobe flashplugin is quite stable for the last 7 months or so. Before that it was hell.

What "brand" of Linux are you running, and do you recommend it? And I don't think you're right about 99.5% of users not compiling their own 64-bit FF browser - I suspect the figure is closer to 99.9% :=)

I am using Archlinux on all my desktops/laptops (superb stuff, extremely user-friendly due to it's extreme simplicity, but not newbie-friendly...) and Debian stable in 4 production machines I am administrating.
If you want to try Linux to see if it works for you, simply install distro XXX in a virtual machine (using VirtualBox) and feel free to screw it as badly as you wish...
For desktop usage for newbies, I would say trying Linuxmint (although it doesn't click to me that much).

Thanks all for your responses. I have downloaded a new edition of shockwave but have not yet had a chance to see if it corrects the problem. I did notice on the net a lot of reports of recent shockwave crashes when it is used with chrome; which is what I have been using.

The latest version of Adobe Flash is 11.3.300.262 at least with FF
I wonder why they need so many decimal places in the version number

As an update, I'm using Firefox 14 now and while it seems stable enough 'most' of the time, Adobe still haven't fixed the flash issue as it crashes on this latest firefox aswell.

kohai STAFF- my laptop automatically shut down & i lost my live chess game. It happened twice! I lost about 40 points & i want them restored.

Anyone who could explain why there is always disconnection in your live games. I lost more than a hundred games already because of this. It disconnects three minutes before the clock ends and only reconnects after two minutes. And it happens when Iḿ at the advantage and end up losing in time. Is anyone messing with peopleś live games? I cannot play 5 minutes anymore because of this. The problem started about thwo or three months now...
My shockwave plugin crashes frequently during live chess games. How do I correct that?