Windows 7: Browser freeze while watching streamed videos online

Hi,



The title pretty much says it all... it freezes for maybe for a third of a second and maybe 5 minutes between freezes.

regards, silenzer

Hello,

Is your flash player updated?

In order to give you proper help, we need correct, detailed OS information.

disable all add-ons on internet explorer, reinstall, graphics card drivers, update bios driver, and reinstall silverlight or install it if you don't have it. let me know if this fixes the problem, that's how i fixed it on my laptop.

Before playing any flash video make right click on a video, choose Settings
and uncheck the box "Enable hardware acceleration"

Not my idea, but I found it online elsewhere and it worked for me! In BIOS changing the frequency ratio for PCI cards and - in my case - AGP video card (a bit older one, not the new PCI Express) - to the higher/highest number available. The default BIOS settings were much lower or lowest settings there. Incidentally, "software" based solutions such as reinstalling drivers, programs, updating versions did not work. Again, only after changing the BIOS settings, all freezes stopped. To be safe, I'd recommend changing these settings one at a time and see if that works. Frankly, I changed both PCI cards and AGP card settings at the same time to the highest numbers, but that might be risky for some reason. Lastly, common sense I think, but simply writing down the original values and the new values in BIOS might help in case the new settings don't help or don't work at all. Hope this helps? Happy New Year!

Are you referring to the "buffering" that intermittently stops the streaming of the video while it's playing? I watch a ton of movies and other videos on line and have dealt with this problem extensively. Unfortunately, I have only found a work-around, and not an actual fix that will prevent it from happening. What you can do is let the video stream to about 3/4 of the way to the end -- doesn't matter if it stops to buffer multiple times or not, just let it run while you're doing something else. Then, before it gets to the end slide the slider back to Start and watch the video. By that point it should be sufficiently buffered to not freeze anymore and not cause you any additional problems. By the way, if you let the slider get all the way to the end before you're ready to watch it, it will, unfortunately repeat the same buffering freezes, so the trick is to be sure you catch it before it finishes, to avoid that problem.

I'm still not sure what you mean by "freeze". If the video freezes inside a perfectly normal browser window while it "buffers" due to a slow internet connection, that is normal and the only cure is to do what imperfect1 suggested. If the browser itself freezes so that it won't respond to your input, that is more complicated and may or may not be helped by a reset: Tools/Internet Options/Advanced/Reset...