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Can't play videos on Hulu anymore?

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After years of working properly videos no longer play on Hulu. A brief ad will play for a few seconds but when the actual program starts it just goes black and a small icon (don't know what to call it) appears indicting that it is refreshing/working but it never does. I am using Windows 10 and I did recently have to reset my PC so Windows reinstalled. I am sure it is some setting, but I have tried every suggestion I could find to no avail. Thanks in advance for your help.

After years of working properly videos no longer play on Hulu. A brief ad will play for a few seconds but when the actual program starts it just goes black and a small icon (don't know what to call it) appears indicting that it is refreshing/working but it never does. I am using Windows 10 and I did recently have to reset my PC so Windows reinstalled. I am sure it is some setting, but I have tried every suggestion I could find to no avail. Thanks in advance for your help.

All Replies (16)

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Please try uninstalling all versions of Adobe Flash Player then try reinstalling the latest version.

For further information on streaming issues on Hulu, please refer to this Hulu support page:

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Thanks, but that didn't help.

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Are you able to play Hulu videos on Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge?

Note: Do not test the website in Google Chrome. Chrome bundles many internal plugins with their software, so it is not a good troubleshooting tool when testing to see if the issue is a system wide problem.

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It works in Chrome. i also downloaded the Hulu app and it works. It seems to be Firefox specific.

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As I said, Google Chrome has many internal plugins that it uses, whereas Firefox uses plugins on your system. If there is an issue with a plugin on your system, it may still work in Chrome because Chrome has custom built plugins.

In order to accurately test to see if this is a Firefox specific issue, you will need to test Hulu in Internet Explorer or Microsoft Edge.

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I'm sorry, I wrote that it works in Chrome, but I meant it works in Edge. I also verified that it works on Firefox on my laptop. I compared all the plug ins and they were the same and the same version. I also went to pingtest.net which was referenced on the hulu troubleshooting page and got an A rating. Vidoes on youtube and other sources play fine.

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It is possible that you may have a setting on your Firefox configuration or an add-on installed that could be preventing Firefox from operating properly.

Please try running Firefox in Safe Mode to see if you can get Hulu to work properly. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily disables your add-ons and and restores some Firefox settings to the factory default.

Let us know if the issue is still present in Safe Mode.


Out of curiosity, is Firefox on your other system that you referred to in your previous response setup to contain the same bookmarks, add-ons, etc? If it is, it may just be simpler to copy your Firefox profile from the working computer to the non-working computer.

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the issue persisted in safe mode.

The working computer should have the same bookmarks. When I got the laptop I used the synch feature to make firefox look like this one. The add-ons should be pretty close. Should I just follow the directions I found on the Firefox help page "Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles" to copy the profile?

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If they are setup the same, then you can try copying your Firefox profile from the working computer into the non-working Firefox. You can do this by copying the files within the working Firefox profile onto a USB and then replacing the files within your non-working profile with the files from the USB.

For steps on how to copy your profile to another computer, please refer to the Back up and restore information in Firefox profiles support article.

Warning: Create a backup of your Firefox profile before replacing your existing profile.

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I just copied my profile to this computer and it didn't solve it. since this is the only thing that is not working and I do have other options I think I am going to forget about it since I have spent too much time on it already. Thanks for your help.

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I just happened to notice there is a 64 bit version of Firefox and I am using the 32 bit. I have Windows 10. Do you think that would help my issue?

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Arthur4 said

I just happened to notice there is a 64 bit version of Firefox and I am using the 32 bit. I have Windows 10. Do you think that would help my issue?

Probably not.

I believe that Hulu uses the HTML5 video player. Can you please navigate to the YouTube HTML5 page and list the video formats that are marked with a red exclamation point?

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Only MSE & WebM VP9 has the red exclamation point.

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Try enabling that HTML5 video type. To do so, please follow these steps:

  1. Enter about:config into your Firefox address bar
  2. Click the I'll be careful button
  3. Search for webm
  4. Change the value of the media.mediasource.webm.enabled boolean to true
  5. Restart Firefox

Does this fix the issue? Please let us know.

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The issue persists. Should I change it back?

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You can if you want, but it shouldn't hurt anything if you leave that setting as is.