Problems with flash player

Papa_Bear

I'm having trouble with flash player (I presume that's what yourtube uses) on an old laptop i use sometimes. It's an HP pavillion with 1GB of RAM and 1GHz
cpu. The playback on videos is very blocky all the time. Is there settings I can adjust either on Windows XP or in flash player itself to combat the problem.

I don't remember it being this bad before I stopped using it for a couple of months while I was getting around to repairing the PSU for it. Is the spec above just not good enough for flash ? I did try a few different versions of flash but no noticeable difference.

Cheers

yoyo

Papa_Bear wrote: »

I'm having trouble with flash player (I presume that's what yourtube uses) on an old laptop i use sometimes. It's an HP pavillion with 1GB of RAM and 1GHz
cpu. The playback on videos is very blocky all the time. Is there settings I can adjust either on Windows XP or in flash player itself to combat the problem.

I don't remember it being this bad before I stopped using it for a couple of months while I was getting around to repairing the PSU for it. Is the spec above just not good enough for flash ? I did try a few different versions of flash but no noticeable difference.

Cheers

What processor is it? What browser are you using? It could well be the system just isn't up to it, particularly if it's a older Celeron CPU. Newer Flash versions will introduce bloat, which in turn could cause issues on older hardware. I'm assuming you have tried ticking the enable hardware acceleration button in Flash play settings?
It could be a combination of the CPU and video card just isn't up to it. But do try another browser to rule that out of being an issue. XP really needs 2GB RAM at least these days due to the overhead of SP3 and the bloat of modern software.
A lightweight Linux distro like xUbuntu may solve the issue if feasible. I'd recommend this as XP is loosing support in only 5 months from now

Nick

BeerFear

I have a couple of laptops that are 2-3 years old and were fairly cheap at the time and all struggling to play YouTube videos. What helps is if you download Google chrome and disable hardware acceleration as nick said

Papa_Bear

The specs I posted are incorrect (was working from memory). It's an AMD sempron 2800+ 1.6GHz and 1.87GB of RAM.

I have tried unticking the hardware acceleration in flash setting and I don't see any difference. Tried using chrome and firefox - both are the same also.

I was thinking of just putting XBMC on it and using it fo entertainment purposes. Perhaps it's not upto that task?

Anyway thanks for you input fellas.

Cheers

PropJoe10

What resolution videos are you trying to watch? I've a laptop with roughly those specs, which struggles to play videos in anything over 480p. If you're watching 720p or 1080p videos, its likely that the hardware speed isnt up to it. As Yoyo said, a Linux distro might help - my personal favourite for old hardware is Lubuntu. Really nice simple desktop and none of the bloatware that comes in standard Ubuntu these days

yoyo

Sempron=AMDs Celerons. I think they may actually perform worse from memory. I'd recommend either Xubuntu or Lubuntu on it and this may solve the performance issues. It's also a good idea to think of upgrading from XP now given the end of support coming up in 5 months time. Having the 2GB of RAM is nice so I don't think you'd run into issues with a lightweight Linux environment.
XBMC should work fine for SD playback, don't think you'll have a nice experience playing HD content back on that spec though. XBMC is available for Linux at any rate so no harm in trying it .

Nick