Desktop computer suddenly refuses to play videos

[JDgreen227]

Yesterday my Dell 530 quit playing YouTube videos...it might show ten or 15 seconds of a video and then lock up and freeze, or it won't play one at all. It works fine otherwise, and the signal it is getting from the wireless DSL router is 48 to 54 mbps. My laptop indicates a signal of 54 mbps and plays videos just fine although it has integrated graphics, while the desktop has a dedicated video card. Any ideas? Thanks.

 

[MossRoad]

Do you ever do any maintenance to that computer, like disk cleanup or defragmenting the hard drive?

 

[Soundguy]

i'd check video drivers as well.

 

[boggen]

would look at the video player, quick time, flash, vlc, media player, you have some program installed that allows videos to be played within your browser. firefox and IE, if ya click around the top on the menu bar. to get to "options" then there should be a tab that displays "applications" or some such, that will list a bunch of file types, and what program plays what. example .pdf files are normally assigned to adobe reader, wmv might be assigned to media player. i honestly do not know what file type youtube likes to use.

clear the cache of your internet browser, and restart computer, and see about getting updates to drivers, and to any video applications you might have.

 

[DFB]

I had that problem before too...clearing the cache and then a restart straightened it back out. One time I kept getting a prompt that it woudnt recognize flash player so I reloaded flash.

Whats really getting me nowadays is Sony music having the rights to so many videos, has blocked them and you cant see them anymore here in the US!

 

[orezok]

How full is your hard drive? If it is close to capacity, it will "hang".

 

[JDgreen227]

Thanks for the replies...do have some answers: Memory is maxed out at 4GB, Hard drive is 320 GB and not even 15% full, I always clear the cache and browsing history before shutting the computer off. I never store anything except digipics and being the only user, I know there isn't a lot of useless junk stored on it from another person. I run disk cleanup about every other month but there is almost never any space gained.

Thanks to all for the suggestions....I will check to learn if there is a driver update for the video card (1 GB Geforce 9500) next and see what results from that.

Umm, Cigar Face....saw your tip after posting this. Have Kaspersky ISS installed and it runs regular scans and they always come up clean. Thanks for the heads up, I should have mentioned the ISS sooner.

 

[edlegault]

De-install Flash and then download current version and re-install.

 

[kw22614]

i'd check video drivers as well.

De-install Flash and then download current version and re-install.

I agree, try these 1st.

 

[JDgreen227]

I agree, try these 1st.

Reinstalled both Flash and Video drivers today...no fix....grrrr.

 

[kw22614]

Reinstalled both Flash and Video drivers today...no fix....grrrr.

Check your pop-up blocker. Seldomly while downloading vids, security software will detect something and then block the entire site, not just the offending vid. Hope this helps and you get it. After this my advice is spent, though I'm sure others on this forum will have more alternatives for you to try. Good luck.
(Please post when you get it figured out as others here may benefit from your experience).

 

[JDgreen227]

Check your pop-up blocker. Seldomly while downloading vids, security software will detect something and then block the entire site, not just the offending vid. Hope this helps and you get it. After this my advice is spent, though I'm sure others on this forum will have more alternatives for you to try. Good luck.
(Please post when you get it figured out as others here may benefit from your experience).

Thanks for your input...the pop up blocker has been disabled and the issue still happens and it is on multiple sites and not just YouTube. I realize that others may benefit from my situation getting fixed which is why I keep updating.

 

[EarPlug]

Try a different Browser i.e. Chrome or Firefox

 

[Fossil Farm]

Have you installed any upgrades or any automatic upgrades been installed in the last couple days? You may want to try an XP "system restore" from a few days ago to see if that will solve the problem. Other ways to test would be to download a small video file, and try to play it locally on your laptop. If that does not work, disable or exit a few programs that startup when you turn on the laptop and see if the local video file will then play. Many of these will be in your system tray and can be stopped manually until you reboot your laptop. Many years ago, when burning CD's was relatively new, I had to exit about everything so I could burn a CD without a failure.

 

[JimRB]

It was not flash but Real Player that got me yesterday. I tried the Flash reinstall/update. Real Player update fixed my problem.

 

[DFB]

Yea doing a system restore couldn't hurt

 

[JDgreen227]

Desktop is running Vista and not XP. I could try a system restore but am very curious as to learning exactly what the problem is. No manual upgrades or automatic upgrades have been installed recently...good point, FossilFarm.

 

[kw22614]

About 2 months ago after a regular windows update and restart my computer crashed, would not restart, would not even restore.
Had to completely reformat. The last time I did a full system backup to ext hard drive was 2009.
Needless to say I lost near 4 years of docs, downloads, and wife's pictures(unforgivable). Luckily I used my recovery disc to at least get my operating system back up, but completely wiped the system restore history. To this day I still have no clue as to why it crashed unless the corruption came from microsoft's windows update. The point I'm making is make sure to back up files regularly not just to the hard drive as I did, which didn't help, but to an external source. If system restore will get your system back to playing vids correctly, imo, do it and count your lucky stars. Leave the 'why' to the young techs who get paid to tackle those probs.

 

[MossRoad]

Lets break this down a bit.

It suddenly stopped working well or it doesn't work well. Unless you did something to the video drivers, they are still there and they probably are not corrupted if videos start and then stop 15 seconds into it.

I would not look at updating them until you do some basic things like run CCleaner and Auslogics disk defragmenter and optimize the disk.

Despite have "tons" of free space on your disk, it doesn't mean you have any contiguous free space on your disk. You need contiguous disk space for your machine to swap things into and out of memory efficiently.

Just like if you want to work on a dirty car engine, you should clean it first. It needs cleaning anyway, so do it. Once it is cleaned and optimized and then if the problem persists, you can then pursue more intrusive troubleshooting.

Always start with the most simple, basic steps in troubleshooting.

 

[orezok]

Go online and find a program to check your memory. Memory occasionally goes bad and when it does it screws up a lot of things.

Sometimes just removing the memory chips and reinstalling will correct "connection' issues.