Problem with sound and Firefox

[don fisher]

When I boot my system I can play music etc. using Rhythmnbox. I also can 
use the volume control. After running Firefox, the pulse application is 
gone (pulseaudio --check returns a 1) and I am not able to restart it. 
But the audio from firefox which must not be using pulse still works 
fine. Sorry, but I am forced to run an old version of the kernel 
(version 3.1.0-7.fc16.x86_64) to get video to work in my Dell 1721 
laptop with a Radeon video card.

The message in /var/log/messages is:

Apr 20 15:52:52 dfpc47 kernel: [20655807.089535] rhythmbox[28699]: 
segfault at 0 ip 00000032888c46e1 sp 00007fff5cf30a00 error 4 in 
librhythmbox-core.so.4.0.0[3288800000+127000]
Apr 20 15:52:54 dfpc47 abrtd: Directory 'ccpp-2014-04-20-15:52:52-28699' 
creation detected
Apr 20 15:52:54 dfpc47 abrt[28741]: Saved core dump of pid 28699 
(/usr/bin/rhythmbox) to /var/spool/abrt/ccpp-2014-04-20-15:52:52-28699 
(113676288 bytes)
Apr 20 15:52:54 dfpc47 abrtd: Size of '/var/spool/abrt' >= 1000 MB, 
deleting 'ccpp-2014-02-05-17:26:08-2212'
Apr 20 15:52:57 dfpc47 abrtd: New problem directory 
/var/spool/abrt/ccpp-2014-04-20-15:52:52-28699, processing
Apr 20 15:53:42 dfpc47 pulseaudio[28780]: socket-server.c: bind(): 
Address already in use
Apr 20 15:53:42 dfpc47 pulseaudio[28780]: module.c: Failed to load 
module "module-esound-protocol-unix" (argument: ""): initialization failed.

I find the segfault is rough to decode form the core dump. Is there 
something special I need to set up to prevent firefox from killing pulse?

Please have mercy. It has been a couple of years since I posted.
Don