On Wednesday last my Firefox Browser auto updated itself to version 10 on my little Windows 7 laptop, but when I came to watch the news I had no sound. I went through my list of browser plugins and updated them all, but it changed nothing. I checked various tech forums and found a few complaints about Flash Player not working with v10, but no working solution, nor an official acknowledgement of the problem. I posted a tweet in frustration, but this evoked no response. Google's Chrome browser continued to provide services Firefox no longer could. Several times in the days following, I have re-run my basic fault finding diagnostic procedure to no avail.
This morning, Linux Mint on my desktop machine offered the equivalent Firefox v10 update, and I refused it, just in case it should break Flash Player. Then I took another look at my broken Windows 7 Firefox. This time I ran a silent video clip, and investigated the laptop's sound production software. On the surface, it was working normally, except for Firefox. Why? The answer was annoyingly simple. The Firefox sound output channel was registered as muted, and when toggled to on, Flash worked as designed.
Before Wednesday evening, Firefox Flash had worked fine, and I'd changed none of its settings. Somehow the upgrade seems to have been accompanied by the sound output channel switching off, whether the two events were were related or not. It was good to track down and correct the problem, and that gave me the confidence to permit the Linux Mint Firefox upgrade. Thankfully, it worked without a hitch. Nothing is as disruptive as when something you rely on stops working, especially if resolving the problem becomes an added distraction. How important consistency is in the tools we rely on to manage our daily lives.
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