Computer Help needed.

[Hightower]

As some of you are aware, my computer skills are OK but not that technical so I'd like to ask for some help with a little problem regarding online video playback.

Sometime over the weekend my computer stopped playing YouTube and iPlayer videos etc. Some YouTube vids worked, but not the Flash player driven ones.

I've checked for any recent updates or downloads and there have been none over the last 5 days. I also have deleted an ad-block program and disabled Kaspersky internet security all to no avail.

I also deleted Adobe Shockwave and reinstalled both Adobe flash player and shockwave again.

There are no errors when I try to play the vids, just a black area where the vid should be and no sound.

As a last resort I restored windows to before the weekend and still no joy.

I'm running windows 7 and Firefox.

Any idea what else I could do?

[Erin]

Go to 'Tools' and 'Add-ons' in Firefox and make sure Shockwave Flash isn't disabled or showing up as incompatible. After that, I've no idea what it could be.

[jyasaki]

After doing Erin's suggestion,

Delete all the cached pages and cookies within your browser.

Delete all temp files for the user (Win7, will be in C:\users\[username]\appdata\local\temp

See if that takes care of it.

jky

[Starovich]

does it work in IE (just to see if its a Firefox issue or not)

[SIBer]

Could be a few things

From fisefox Help>About Firefox and see if it prompts you to update.
Some suggestions here to save mw typing them - Let us know how you get on.

YouTube videos won't play? - YouTube Help
Firefox will not play youtube videos, the video will be a black space and will not work, but IE will | Firefox Support Forum | Firefox Help

If it still doesn't work, then a hammer, gaffer tape, cable ties and WD40 can be used to fix anything.

[Hightower]

Thanks for your help guys, I had done most of what you suggested already as it either seemed logical to rule a few things out or had done a search for problems.

What I hadn't done was to download Microsoft IE as Starovich had suggested. That worked perfectly, even though I hate the format. That got me thinking about Firefox however!

I seemed to remember a while back that there was a fairly big upgrade offered, one that I refused due to me being a "if it aint broken don't fix it" type. Other people in the computer industry don't seem to agree in that philosophy it seems however. So I upgraded Firefox to the latest rev like SIBer suggested. Worked a treat! I must admit that there are even one or two changes to the internet explorer interface that I think are pretty cool.

So all happy once more.

Thanks again!

[jyasaki]

Don't feel bad. I work as a computer support guy at a college. At least you get the problem description right. I get calls like "I can't print", only to find out the computer's monitor had died. Couldn't print because they couldn't see the print button. Go figure.

jky

[SPR]

I get fed up , removing the correction fluid from screens - I keep telling her - use the delete key !

[Hightower]

Whenever the wife goes on the computers I hold my breath.

The Kids used to be a nightmare, but at least as they've got older they learn what to do and not to do.

At least I'm not having so many problems like I used to, unless I fire up the laptop as it runs Vista.