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I have a fresh install on Windows XP, Firefox, and Flash player. I have installed all possible Windows XP SP3 updates.

Every time I watch a video on youtube, it plays for 1 minute, and then stops. no loading icon appears, I cant rewind it to random location: whole player is frozen. Reloading the webpage helps sometimes but on some video I couldnt make it work at all once it was frozen.

The weird thing is, youtube and everything worked flawlessly the day before, when I had my old Windows XP installation.

The only difference between my new and old setup is that I have moved program files folder to another drive (from registry). Also, my Windows partition has only 5gigs free space now. (15gigs before), and I cant really make it use less space, at least I dont know how. I tried to move (as usual) the paging file to another drive, to save some space, but the Windows partition just keeps using more space every day, (i think it added 3gigs there today), how could I stop it?

Could those be the problem?

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  • To clear space you can get rid of all temporary files that your browsers accumulate.
    – brunnerh
    Aug 24, 2012 at 20:38
  • @H.B., i have set my firefox to delete temp files every time it is closed. By the way, is it possible to decide where firefox will store the temp files?
    – Rookie
    Aug 24, 2012 at 21:01
  • Not that i know of, but if you go to about:config and search for cache there are a lot of fine-tuning options, of course you should not randomly change stuff if you do not know what it does.
    – brunnerh
    Aug 24, 2012 at 21:04

2 Answers 2

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How about not using flash and switching to HTML 5?

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  • Thats a bit too much work for me to do for every video manually... Edit: doesnt make any difference, freezes as bad as the other method. Maybe my harddrive is just very, very bad? (its quite old).
    – Rookie
    Aug 24, 2012 at 20:23
  • @Rookie: Well, as there currently is no option have this set permanently (as far as i know) i wrote a Greasemonkey script which does the redirect for me.
    – brunnerh
    Aug 24, 2012 at 20:24
  • @Rookie: If HTML5 does not work for you either that might be a sign that the problem indeed is somewhere else, like system limitations.
    – brunnerh
    Aug 24, 2012 at 20:36
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    > Well, as there currently is no option have this set permanently Sure there is; you can set a cookie.
    – Synetech
    Aug 25, 2012 at 5:37
  • @Synetech: Thanks for the info, been looking in the settings but it makes sense that it isn't there while it's still in trials...
    – brunnerh
    Aug 25, 2012 at 5:56
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Here are a few suggestions/questions for you:

  1. You mention you are using Firefox on XP. How about other browsers? Chrome? IE? Does each browser have the same end result (the video freezing after approx 1 minute of playing)? If the problem occours across all browsers, then it is most likely a hardware issue. This does not explain why it was working yesterday, but things do break.
  2. Are you watching videos in full screen or in the standard default sized youtube video window? Does it seem to happen no matter what you have the quality settings at (320p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p)?
  3. How are you connecting to the internet? Wifi? Ethernet? Are there any other computers in your house that you can test to see if this might actually be an issue with your internet connection? I suggest being wired at all times if possible.
  4. What are the specs on your computer? having 5GB free on your windows partition makes me think you have like a 100GB ATA/100 drive. CPU? RAM? Laptop? Desktop? How old?

In regard to your question about changing the page file size and location in XP, see the following URL (tutorial /w pictures)

http://www.geeksinphoenix.com/blog/post/2010/11/03/Managing-Virtual-Memory-Pagefile-in-Windows-XP.aspx

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  • Opera does the same. im using standard size video, all sizes bug. im starting to suspect its all about my internet connection, but it is 4MBps, and it started to get slow after fresh XP install... not sure why. maybe its just coincidence...
    – Rookie
    Aug 24, 2012 at 23:02
  • 4MBps should be plenty enough to watch anything on youtube. Have any changes been made to your network recently? New router or switch? Firewall rule added? Are you connecting to the internet using a different adapter than usual (wifi or wired)? Are you sure that you reinstalled ALL of your drivers after re-installing XP?
    – Richie086
    Aug 26, 2012 at 2:14
  • nope, just installed XP... i think it works now, after i restarted my router. yep i installed all drivers.
    – Rookie
    Aug 26, 2012 at 12:03

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