Hello,

If it is happening on other browsers as well then it may be that your hardware is not up to the job. Playing youtube videos with flash can be quite a resource intensive task.

I suggest trying the HTML5 version of youtube which doesn't require flash to function. You can join the trial by navigating to this URL:

http://www.youtube.com/html5

Then click the 'Join the Trial' button.

Once you have done this the majority of youtube videos should be able to playback using html5 rather than flash. This should be less resource intensive and hopefully will solve the stuttering.

If you want to return to the flash version of youtube just go back to the same link and click to leave the trial.

I hope that helps. Let me know if not.

Thanks for the suggestion. However, using the HTML5 trial only made it slightly worse. With the trial, it stuttered slightly more and this time, the audio stuttered with it. I have had no problems with any YouTube videos until last week. I have cleared all history, temp files, used CCleaner to ensure I didn't miss anything. My laptop might be weak, but it has never had this problem before until now. It works perfectly on my wife's All-In-One Dell Inspiron One 2020 with Windows 8, though she's always using it and almost never watches any YouTube videos. I am running out of ideas of what to do, it is only a minor issue, but it quickly gets irritating.

Hmm...

Did you install or change anything in particular last week?

There are lots of things that could be causing this unfortunately. Here are a few thoughts. I hope something here will help:

• Did you change your laptop power settings to a setting which prioritises power saving over performance?
• Is your laptop overheating causing the processor to throttle?
• Did you install any new software which may be using system resources - check in the resource monitor?
• Do you have any viruses or malware that is causing problems? Do some additional scans - MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware; Hitman Pro; Microsoft Safety Scanner
• Have you fully defragmented your hard drive?
• Did you recently update Flash? If so possibly try rolling back or disabling flash's hardware acceleration. troubleshooting flash.
• Is realplayer up to date?

I hope this helps.

Other than the basic Windows updates, no; and I did those updates just yesterday. The problem has been going on now for about a week or so. I fully defragged my drive a week ago, updated Flash yesterday, ran MSE and Malwarebytes full scans as well as ComboFix 2 days ago, power settings are set to Power Saver, but I am running while plugged in and fully charged. -I will try under balanced and get back to you on that- Resource Monitor and Task Manager show nothing hogging CPU. Usually run YouTube while playing Minecraft, but problem persists even with Minecraft closed. I have tons of programs installed, both for class as well as to practice stuff in the IT realm, but I have tried it with them all off and nothing. Realplayer got updated just yesterday as well.

Power Change Update: Nothing new, possibly caused audio to skip with video as well.

Ok thanks for trying. How about the High Performance battery setting?

How does the Performance tab in Task Manager look while you are playing the video? Are you getting high CPU usage?

Maybe try uninstalling RealPlayer altogether? I've seen various posts linking it with flash problems.

High Performance: Nothing changed CPU Usage: Moderate, no change RealPlayer: Tried uninstalling-no change Tried reinstalling: no change

I don't know if this matters or not, but I like to play my YouTube videos with a 360 quality setting. I have tried at 144 and 240 but it will still stutter just as much. I tried watching the same video in the actual RealPlayer application itself, and it played exactly as it does on YouTube.

I'm afraid at this stage I am pretty much out of ideas.

My instinct is that, given that the issue is displaying in other browsers besides Firefox, that it is a PC issue rather than a Firefox issue.

"I tried watching the same video in the actual RealPlayer application itself, and it played exactly as it does on YouTube."

I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Are you saying that videos downloaded on your PC and played off your hard drive are stuttering as well as ones played on youtube?

I think that would strongly indicate a deeper problem. Possibly a hardware issue but I'm not sure.

The last Firefox related possibility might be to try a Firefox Reset. You seem to have tried pretty much everything else. Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings. This will put Firefox back to defaults, your bookmarks etc will be saved but all add-ons will need to be reinstalled. But if the issue is not confined to Firefox then this probably won't help much.

It could be that my laptop is slowly reaching the end of its life. Slowly, but surely. I went into Web Videos in RealPlayer and tried to watch the same video and it stuttered there too. I did a full reset on FireFox and nothing has changed. I am out of ideas and hoping that someday soon I can get a new and better laptop. Thank you for your help.

You're welcome. I hope you manage to resolve the problem.

Update: After an hour of tweaking my system. I found the problem, ~5,000 temporary IE files hidden away in my system (removed), ~1,000 unused registry entries (deleted), around ~30 unused services that I never use or need (stopped) and a few old programs I never use (uninstalled).

  After doing all of that, YouTube no longer stutters and my system overall is running much smoother. I also went from ~60GB free HDD space to ~70GB free.

• For those of you who don't know where to find your IE temp files, check (for Windows 7 Home at least)

C:\User\(Username)\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\{(random numbers and letteres)}\

• For System temp files:

C:\Windows\temp\ The more full those are, the slower your system will become.

• My system had around 6 of those folders each with around 1,000 files taking up about 25MB space each.

Thank you again for your help.

Great stuff. I'm surprised Ccleaner didn't manage to get those temp files but I guess nothing is perfect.

Glad it is working again. :)