Videos Suddenly Stopping

Captain Panda · 28 Aug 2010

Hey all. I just got this brand spankin' new laptop today. I jumped online to watch some House and ran into some difficulty. No matter where I go, no matter what website I use, it will play for a minute or two and then suddenly stop. Not pause, not freeze, but stop. It's as if I've reached the end of the video altogether. Pressing play again does absolutely nothing. Refreshing the page is equally useless, as the video will again play for a little bit and then stop. I am quite frustrated.

Does anyone have any clue why this is happening? Here are the specs that matter on this new computer. If there's any more information you need, let me know.

HP Pavilion dv6 running Windows 7 Home Premium
CPU: AMD Phenom II N260 Dual Core 2.8 GHz
Graphics Card: AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250

Thanks, everybody.

richc46 · 28 Aug 2010

Could be several things

Internet speed
Take the speed test and the ping test and give us a screen shot of the results
Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test

Could be a graphics driver
Go to device manager and look for any yellow markers that show a card or driver is defective
Type device manager in search

How much ram do you have?

Captain Panda · 28 Aug 2010

Screencap attached.

I'm running on 4 GB of RAM. I checked in the Device Manager, but found no yellow markers indicating any problem. Is there another way to check?

Diagnosis?

richc46 · 28 Aug 2010

There is also a ping test, it shows near the bottom of the page shown. Can you take that please?

Captain Panda · 28 Aug 2010

Do forgive me. Here we are.

richc46 · 28 Aug 2010

Well, you have good connectiions, its not the internet speed. Try going to search.
Type default programs. Go to set default programs. Change your default media player to another selection. If no other choices, you can use this list.
You probably have Windows Media Center (player)

Comparison of video player software - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Before downloading make a system restore point, in the event that it does not help and you want to remove it.

Captain Panda · 28 Aug 2010

Will that help with videos embedded into webpages (Hulu, Vureel, Youtube et. al)?

richc46 · 28 Aug 2010

No, unfortunately it would not. You probably have adobe flash player, the only real substitue is Macromedia Flash Player

But this is a good point. Is the problem only when you watch at the sites that you mentioned or also when you use Media Player?

whs · 28 Aug 2010

Rich, that sounds to me like a buffering problem. The Radeon HD 4250 is a very low end graphics device and that may not be able to keep up with the flow.
The technique I use in those cases is to stop the video at the beginning for a minute and then restart after the buffering has had a chance to keep up.

richc46 · 28 Aug 2010

whs said:

Rich, that sounds to me like a buffering problem. The Radeon HD 4250 is a very low end graphics device and that may not be able to keep up with the flow.
The technique I use in those cases is to stop the video at the beginning for a minute and then restart after the buffering has had a chance to keep up.

Thanks Wolfgang, you may be correct and the OP should heed your advice. What threw me off track is that with my Windows 98, I would try to watch a video etc, but it would stop for 5 seconds, and then contiune and do this for the entire video. The poster has it completely frozen. Your point, is a good one.