Getting So Annoyed - Online Videos Loading Only Partially and Stopping

[CCSaar]

Any online video: YouTube, news websites, Hulu, anything. The videos will load anywhere between ten seconds and one minutes in, and then just stop. When I'm watching the video and it gets to that point, the video freezes, as if it's trying to buffer more, but it doesn't.

I run Windows XP on my Dell XPS M140 laptop. My main browser is the lastest dev build of Google Chrome, though this problems occurs in my versions of IE and FireFox, as well, so I don't think it is a problem inherent in the browser.

I've tried reinstalling Adobe Flash and I've tried downgrading to different versions of it. One person told me to find "C:\Documents and Settings\[your windows account name]\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash Player" and delete my cookies, but it doesn't seem like I even have that folded. I've even tried Restoring my computer a few weeks back--nothing works!!

Any help is greatly, greatly appreciated. Thank you.

[jackkent]

Could it be the hard disk partition holding the web page caches and the video caches is stuffed? So it could explain why you have this problem repetitively.
If purging the caches gives you no go, you may consider a clean reinstallation then.

[patio]

What type of web connection do you have ? ?

[CCSaar]

If I can help it, I'd rather not wipe my whole hard drive...

@ Patio: I have DSL High-Speed Internet. I'm connected to it wirelessly.

[Allan]

Could it be the hard disk partition holding the web page caches and the video caches is stuffed? So it could explain why you have this problem repetitively.
If purging the caches gives you no go, you may consider a clean reinstallation then.

Ignore this post

[patio]

If I can help it, I'd rather not wipe my whole hard drive...

@ Patio: I have DSL High-Speed Internet. I'm connected to it wirelessly.

Travel Here... and run a 1/2 dozen tests over an hour period or so...compare the results to what your providers advertised speed is.

[CCSaar]

Ignore this post

OK... why?

Travel Here... and run a 1/2 dozen tests over an hour period or so...compare the results to what your providers advertised speed is.

Will this fix the problem? I don't believe this is a problem with my connection speed. I've been using the same Internet provider and router for months and the problem just recently arose.

[patio]

It doesn't fix anything...it does however report what speeds your connection is at...

[CCSaar]

Um, OK, cool. 4228 Kb/s download speed, 984 Kb/s upload speed, 33ms latency.

Now what do I do with this information?