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Firefox freezes when playing YouTube videos

  • 21 replies
  • 203 have this problem
  • 439 views
  • Last reply by zoredache

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This just started happening yesterday. Whenever I go to play a YouTube video, the whole program will freeze and become unresponsive twice for about a minute each time. This only happens on YouTube. No other website that plays videos has this problem. Also, this only happens on Firefox, my default browser. No other browser installed on my PC has this issue. This issue also occurs when the page tries to load the comments on a YouTube video.

I've tried reinstalling both the Flash player and Firefox. I've turned off the hardware acceleration on both Firefox and the Flash player. I've turned off the Protected Mode in the Shockwave Plugin. I've tried opening Firefox in Safe Mode. YouTube plays in HTML5 by default. Is anyone else having this problem? There must be a way to resolve this.

This just started happening yesterday. Whenever I go to play a YouTube video, the whole program will freeze and become unresponsive twice for about a minute each time. This only happens on YouTube. No other website that plays videos has this problem. Also, this only happens on Firefox, my default browser. No other browser installed on my PC has this issue. This issue also occurs when the page tries to load the comments on a YouTube video. I've tried reinstalling both the Flash player and Firefox. I've turned off the hardware acceleration on both Firefox and the Flash player. I've turned off the Protected Mode in the Shockwave Plugin. I've tried opening Firefox in Safe Mode. YouTube plays in HTML5 by default. Is anyone else having this problem? There must be a way to resolve this.

Chosen solution

Well I found out that I can resolve the problem by LOGGING OUT OF MY YOUTUBE ACCOUNT. I'm going to have words with the people at Google.

Read this answer in context 👍 18

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I believe I am having a similar problem, but I haven't completely figured out why it happens.

So when I start watching videos in a youtube playlist everything will be fine, until I remove things from my playlist that I have watched. It also seems to, sometimes, be triggered by searching for a video search.

@lamiejang suggestion about it possibly it being related to the sidebar seems plausible to me.

Anyway, the symptom once it happens it that Firefox will be appear to hang for 30 seconds or so any time it switch to a new video. And also, whenever the tab/regains focus after I have switched to anything else.

Once it has started youtube will be very painful to use. Until I logout, or I wait like 10-12 hours.

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