This has been happening for about the last month. My computer will be working fine, but then if I go onto youtube, thereafter it becomes sluggish, including that my scrolling is slowed down, and sort of "stutters." It stays that way indefinitely -- unless I close the browser and reopen it, and then immediately all is fine again, as long as I don't go back onto youtube. Also everything is way slowed down while something is playing on youtube.

Anyone else having this with youtube, or recognize the pattern from anything else?

I don't notice this problem on any of my machines.

Maybe it's something to do with the flash plugin for your web browser.You can try uninstalling the flash plugin and reinstalling, or try another web browser like Chrome which has flash built in.

If you use a browser that has add-ons or plugins support, try disabling all of them and see if it fixes it.

Try clearing your cache, its possible that will help.

Thanks for the replies! Now I just have to find out what those things mean.

Flash uses up a lot of RAM and if you visit a lot of youtube pages your RAM will fill up fast. Even with 16G I have this problem. Clearing caches might still leave your RAM fragmented so the real solution is to restart your computer. This frees your RAM completely and you're good to go.

Oops, its 10:24, "suprise!, I've got to go.

But if its happening after just one visit to youtube, then something else is going on. Still though, probably related to flash.

--duplicate post- can no longer delete--

Thanks for coming on here and making the suggestions (really!) but FWIW restarting doesn't do it. I imagine some of the other stuff might.

You say closing the browser and reopening fixes things until you go back to youtube. Seems almost certainly a memory problem related to flash. You could watch your memory usage when you open the browser and see what's going on there. If you're on a PC, someone else will have to tell you how to do this (buried deep somewhere in the Control Panel I believe), I'm a Mac guy. On a Mac, you view the Activity Monitor.

How much RAM do you have?

Not sure if this is a solution for you (somewhat geeky) but....

I'm trying a new app called "synergy" (no relation) that lets me switch between two computers by simply moving my mouse over to my second screen. My main computer is a Mac, my second is a HP PC laptop (hooked up to a large screen). By doing this, I can run the brower on the PC which frees up my Mac for my main music and graphic apps. This way, browsing on youtube and such as no impact on my main machine. And to switch between the two its as easy as literally moving my mouse from one screen to the other. So I have instant access to the Mac and PC with the same mouse and keyboard. This is very cool!

Setup was a bit of a bitch as there are some technical problems between the Mac and PC. But if you're using two PCs it works like a dream. My son is a total absolute nerd (minus the glasses) so he helped me set it up. Its about the same as setting up a VNC connection with a server and a client. If you've done this its easy enough, if not, get some help from a local geek.

I absolutely love this! No more problems with flash eating up the memory on my main machine.

I believe that YouTube uses Adobe Flash. I have been having a lot of trouble recently with the Flash plug-in in the Firefox browser. Firefox freezes and for nearly a minute I have no control over the computer. Then I get notifications wherever there is Flash content that the Flash plug-in has crashed.

It's very annoying. Firefox recommends downloading the latest version of Flash but that doesn't solve the problem.

For god's sake, download Flash. I remember a while ago you couldn't open my tracks on myspace because you didn't have flash hahahahahaha

On a PC, right-click on the taskbar and choose Task Manager, then click on the Processes tab.

Hmmm yes I think I have seen thi s problem intermittetly also. Didnt pay much attention at the time since this is an older box and goe sslow for other reasons. I'll try to note slowness related to YT and post again if I find anything.

The only suggestion I'd make right now is to be sure you are up-to-date with all the latest versions of FF, Java, Flash and Windows.

Youtube will use HTML5 if you are viewing on a capable browser.


TBH, it sounds like you don't have enough physical memory, Mark. The slowness is probably the OS shifting memory contents to virtual memory on disk, which is always quite a bit slower than normal unless you have a fast SSD.

fwiw, I just upgraded my laptop from 2G to 4G of memory. It was occasionally sluggish with the 2G. It's like I now have a brand new computer.

-J

It would help if I understood half the stuff y'all are talking about.

I think I'll wait till my laptop completely crashes, then join a monastery or something.

But seriously folks....


What makes me doubt this (not that I know enough to doubt anything) is that other people have been complaining of similar things lately, with various sites -- so, I suspect that while there might well be something about my computer, there's also something more general going on.

But anyway: Pardon the idiot question, but what's an easy thing to do for the memory capacity? Would it help for me to delete stuff -- and (here comes a more-idiot question) what does it really mean to delete stuff? Would getting rid of some bookmarks help? Or stuff that's saved on my desktop? Or what?

Thanks in advance.

lol Mark; I can't say I would blame you.


I have 4 GB in my MacBook Pro and even that isn't enough for certain things anymore (older MBP). However, I went all out with the PC I built for gaming and threw in 16 GB. Now I never run out even with my FreeBSD virtual machine running.

So...besides what I asked in my above post (which I did just before your last post)....let me ask, what's involved in getting more memory?

Well I haven't been having issues with youtube. It's probably you. =P


If you are running short of memory the best thing to do with don't try to run too many programs at once, especially if you use stuff like Photoshop that uses a lot anyway. Restarting your browser every now and then is a good idea too. I've seen Firefox using >1.5 GB on OS X before.

Thanks, H.
I rarely run more than 2 programs at once, and usually it's just 1.

And Photoshop -- are you kidding?

Find out exactly what kind of RAM your PC or Mac uses, determine the maximum your computer will support, and buy a third party RAM set (most bigger name brands will be fine, e.g. Crucial). If you actually want to upgrade, send me a PM and I'll try to help you out.

Thanks, H! I'll probably look into that.
(I don't want to rip you off any further in tutoring me on Laptops 101.)