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.

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.

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% :=)

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?