Desktop computer suddenly refuses to play videos

[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.