Computer Issue, Any Help or Suggestions?

[Trekker4747]

Recently it seems I've been having issues with watching videos on the Internet. Whether it's YouTube or some other host, and this suddenly happened pretty much "overnight."

The issue is something like a "popping" or crackling sound in the audio of the video. I've uninstalled and re-installed Flash several times and done several Virus/Malware scans with my computer and have come up empty. And this is even including the fact that YT now, apparently, only supports HTML5 but using a browser add-on to "force" it to use Flash I still have the issue.

Browser is Opera 32.0.1948.25, which is Chromium based.

OS: Is Windows Vista.

 

[Kor]

If you try playing a DVD or video files saved on the computer, do you get the same issue? If so, you might need to troubleshoot the audio.

Kor

 

[Trekker4747]

No other audio issues in any other program.

 

[Saga]

my advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

 

[Amaris]

There are a number of possibilities. Is it happening in any other browser?

 

[Trekker4747]

There are a number of possibilities. Is it happening in any other browser?

It happens in actual Chrome as well, I've no other browser to test the problem in. I.E. is too far out of date (and apparently I can't upgrade it with Vista) guess I could give Firefox a shot.

ETA -

Okay, so I installed and ran Firefox and am not having the audio issues there so, I suppose, for video-watching I can use it but it really adds more hurdles than I want to my surfing (do we still call it that?) And it adds a wrinkle to this:

As I said, I normally use Opera which is a Chromium browser, Chrome was having the same issues and as we all know Chrome is brought to us by Google. Google who owns Youtube.

So, why is it that Google's own browser infrastructure is YouTube experiencing problems?

 

[tharpdevenport]

Well, I cant' say what your problem is, but I worked with a lot of mega bytes of data each day, sometiems well over one giga byte and for some reason or other that tends to make audio skip or pop. So I run in Administrator mode Temp File Cleaner:

bleepingcomputer.com/download/tfc/

Then after I restart I Defrag and that does it.

I also run Disk Cleanup under System Tools from the Start menu.

 

[DimesDan]

Update from Vista and then update your audio drivers or if you can already, try and update them anyway.

 

[Amaris]

There are a number of possibilities. Is it happening in any other browser?

It happens in actual Chrome as well, I've no other browser to test the problem in. I.E. is too far out of date (and apparently I can't upgrade it with Vista) guess I could give Firefox a shot.

ETA -

Okay, so I installed and ran Firefox and am not having the audio issues there so, I suppose, for video-watching I can use it but it really adds more hurdles than I want to my surfing (do we still call it that?) And it adds a wrinkle to this:

As I said, I normally use Opera which is a Chromium browser, Chrome was having the same issues and as we all know Chrome is brought to us by Google. Google who owns Youtube.

So, why is it that Google's own browser infrastructure is YouTube experiencing problems?

That's what I thought. Try this:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/973133

 

[Trekker4747]

There are a number of possibilities. Is it happening in any other browser?

It happens in actual Chrome as well, I've no other browser to test the problem in. I.E. is too far out of date (and apparently I can't upgrade it with Vista) guess I could give Firefox a shot.

ETA -

Okay, so I installed and ran Firefox and am not having the audio issues there so, I suppose, for video-watching I can use it but it really adds more hurdles than I want to my surfing (do we still call it that?) And it adds a wrinkle to this:

As I said, I normally use Opera which is a Chromium browser, Chrome was having the same issues and as we all know Chrome is brought to us by Google. Google who owns Youtube.

So, why is it that Google's own browser infrastructure is YouTube experiencing problems?

That's what I thought. Try this:

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/973133

Yeah, I've already done that -one of the first things I tried, actually- and no effect.

 

[Amaris]

The only thing I can think of, aside from doing a complete uninstall of Opera, deleting the registry files, and reinstalling Opera, is to disable hardware acceleration. Have you tried that?

 

[Trekker4747]

The only thing I can think of, aside from doing a complete uninstall of Opera, deleting the registry files, and reinstalling Opera, is to disable hardware acceleration. Have you tried that?

Disabled Hardware Acceleration, yes. Install and reinstall, not yet. Was hoping to avoid that.

 

[Taylirious]

my advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

This. And Stop downloading porn!

[yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNXXpTsd_Co[/yt]

 

[Amaris]

The only thing I can think of, aside from doing a complete uninstall of Opera, deleting the registry files, and reinstalling Opera, is to disable hardware acceleration. Have you tried that?

Disabled Hardware Acceleration, yes. Install and reinstall, not yet. Was hoping to avoid that.

It may be the only option you have. If you do the reinstall, do the whole shebang. Uninstall, delete all registry files associated with the browser, run CCleaner, shut down and restart your computer, and reinstall the browser. That way, every step is covered.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

First, I'd disable any add-ons you have for Chrome.

Then:

Try watching videos in Safe Mode. If that works fine, you know it is a driver issue. If not, it is probably hardware related.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Sounds like a possible bug in Chromium in general, hence why Opera would have the same bug as Chrome, and why Firefox, which uses a different engine works. I know that Chrome loads its own internal version of Flash (possibly Opera too?), so that may have something to do with it.

 

[Trekker4747]

Sounds like a possible bug in Chromium in general, hence why Opera would have the same bug as Chrome, and why Firefox, which uses a different engine works. I know that Chrome loads its own internal version of Flash (possibly Opera too?), so that may have something to do with it.

That's what I'm thinking, only YouTube doesn't seem to use Flash anymore and is all HTML5. I've had no other Flash issues. I'm going to wait a while before doing something "drastic" like uninstalling and then reinstalling Opera. Not something I relish to, esp. re-getting all of my widgets, re organizing (and getting) bookmarks and getting settings where I want them.

For now I can watch videos on Firefox, my Malware and Antivirus software are both up-to-date and have done complete, thorough, scans and turned up nothing. Drivers on all my hardware are as up-to-date as they can be. (There weren't even any new drivers for my on-board sound.)

I'll see what happens, as I suspect it's a Chrome/Opera issue more than it's a Flash or other issue.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Oh yeah, you're right on HTML5. Could possibly be a rendering bug then, happening for whatever reason. If that's the case, it might not be so easily fixed by you and more on their end.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

If you are ready to do something crazy, install a fresh copy of Windows on a separate drive or partition, and see if it works fine from there.