stuttering when playing videos via browser

[varchi]

Hey everyone, I'm not sure where else to post this. Quite simply, my system lags when i start playing a flash video in ANY of my browsers. Here is my system. Windows 10 pro 64bit. I have the latest bios, chipset, gpu driver, and browsers.

Can anyone help me troubleshoot this or point me in the right direction?

 

[Ralston18]

Use Task Manager and Resource Monitor to observe what your system is doing.

Open, for example, Task Manager and then explore the tabs etc. to learn about the information being presented. Watch what is happening and how things change.

Slide the Task Manager window to one side and leave it open. Then play some of the flash videos. Most likely you will discover some bottleneck that is occurring or some app, process, or service, grabbing all of a resource.

No need to immediately react to what appears to be the problem. Do some additional testing. Look for some background app that can be turned off. Or some other conflict situation.

Especially if there are multiple apps being launched at boot time. You may not even realize that some things are being started. Turn them off if not needed.

 

[varchi]

Ralston18, I'm really not seeing any patterns. Playing flash videos (hbogo) on chrome, edge, or firefox result in the entire system skipping -- mouse hangs, task manager and resource monitor all freeze for a tiny-second increments. I have noticed that other things will trigger this as well like refreshing some pages in chrome.

One thing I am noticing is that my cpu frequency is nearly always at 95% or higher. During these instances of video or page refreshes I am seeing my cpu frequency jump to 100%. I'm not sure how to ID a culprit via task mgr and resource monitor if they are only pointing to my browsers as the cpu hogs.

[strike]Is a cpu freq that high normal?[/strike] I am looking at my work computer now, seeing that it is nearly always at +100%. Also, my temps on the problem computer are consistently safe below 50°C.

Should I be looking at RAM as the culprit?

 

[Ralston18]

In the Processes Tab, watch the memory column. (You can click the column title/% to sort from high to low and vice versa.)

In Task Manager, click the Performance tab and watch Memory Usage.

At the bottom of the window you should see a small white dial with a red needle: "Open Resource Monitor".

Take a look there as well.

RAM could be the culprit, but not in and of itself. There may be some buggy app or process taking more and more RAM and not releasing it when no longer needed.

And consider virtual memory - what is going on with respect to Disk activity???

 

[varchi]

In the Processes Tab, watch the memory column. (You can click the column title/% to sort from high to low and vice versa.)

In Task Manager, click the Performance tab and watch Memory Usage.

At the bottom of the window you should see a small white dial with a red needle: "Open Resource Monitor".

Take a look there as well.

RAM could be the culprit, but not in and of itself. There may be some buggy app or process taking more and more RAM and not releasing it when no longer needed.

And consider virtual memory - what is going on with respect to Disk activity???

Disk use looked normal this morning. I'll check again this afternoon. The only change I've made right before this started was installing Unreal Engine to test their new Unreal Studio Beta. This doesn't run in the background, so, I don't know how it would be the problem.

Looks like I'm going to be running a lot of diagnostics tonight. I skimmed through some other posts and found these guys: latencymon, memtest, and wd's data lifeguard. I'm also going to investigate power settings, I saw that someone else fixed their stuttering problem by changing their power profile to max performance.

From what I can gather this usually relates to some issue between windows 10, ram, and ssd's. My problem however is not so random.

 

[varchi]

• 
  - updated gpu driver w/ fresh install and removed geforce experience
  - ran windows memory diagnostic test - no errors
  - updated my wireless and wired network adapter drivers
  - checked for new audio drivers
  - ran western digital's data lifeguard diagnostic - no errors
  - uninstalled unreal engine, studio, and launcher
  - tried latest and 3 prior flash installations, uninstalling beforehand each time
  - disabled hardware acceleration in flash video dialog box
  - disabled hardware acceleration in chromes settings
  - changed power plan to max performance, disabling PCIe power saving option (installing latest amd chipset had created a new AMD balanced plan)
  - uninstalled precision xoc (used it to change led on gfx card)
  - disabled intel extreme tuning utility service (never used it. found it while scanning for suspicious services)

No luck -- exact same stuttering at the start of a flash video in any browser.

I noticed that my latest restore point is when directx installed, which I assume Unreal Engine decided to do on its own. Interesting. Windows Update is supposed to be the sole installer of directx on Windows 10 systems. Since I can't uninstall/reinstall-clean directx by itself, it looks like I will perform a system restore a couple points back.

Anything else I need to be testing investigating? Can I assume that my hardware (ram, nvme ssd, gpu, and cpu) are fine?

 

[Ralston18]

Apologies as I am at a disadvantage. I very much tend to avoid third party software applications.

Not a Windows "fanboy" per se so therefore I am willing to live with short comings within Windows.

My guiding rule is that there must be some driving requirement unfulfilled by Windows. Then I may test and try 3rd party software.

If that product fails to meet my requirements for the situation then the software is uninstalled and I "live with it". Or without the 3rd party application as may be.

Point being that there are always trade-offs. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease.....

 

[varchi]

Jeeze. System restore. Still had issue. Full, clean, reformat. Wiped all my drives. New partitions. Still the same issue. It is noticeably better though. I actually had to bring out my ms surface to play some movies (hbogo) while reformatting, which I actually had to force restart after a freeze mid-movie. Maybe this version of flash is jacked.

Going with a last-ditch effort right now -- powering down to switch out my surge protectors to brand new ones.

 

[Ralston18]

Please remember dxdiag....

"WIN" + "R" > type in dxdiag and click okay.

Look for any noted problems.

 

[varchi]

dxdiag lists "no problems found" on every tab.

■

Please remember dxdiag....

"WIN" + "R" > type in dxdiag and click okay.

Look for any noted problems.

 

[Ralston18]

Do you have other computers to try playing the videos on?

You mentioned ms surface - anything else?

Anywhere else you can take your system and try watching? Nuisance of course, but might provide a clue or two.

Other than the above, I must admit that I am out of ideas at the moment.....

 

[varchi]

For [watch your language] sake. I disabled my wireless network adapter. One tiny hang, [strike]but after that videos continue smoothly.[/strike] 40 min later -- still some moments of skipping/stuttering.

I'll keep monitoring [strike]and probably mark this as answered... jesus.[/strike]

 

[Ralston18]

After thought. Are you familiar with Event Viewer?

If not, here is a helpful link from within this Forum:

http/www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-3128616/windows-event-viewer.html

Looking back through the preceding posts it occurred to me that the Event Viewer logs may be capturing something that happens just before or at the time of the "skipping/stuttering".

Likely to be a bit tedious to dig out but take your time and learn your way around the logs.

Be aware that sometimes the logs will report "no records" but are actually still collecting up the data. Displays after some amount of time.

And you can right-click on any given log entry to get more information and detail.

 

[vincentwilliams008]

Hello
I just had the same problem arise out of the blue.
The solution for me...stop using Google Chrome.
I downloaded Chrome Canary and now no more stuttering when streaming my live streamed sporting events.
The whole process took 5 minutes
My resolution is better too.
Hope it helps

 

[danielwmatlock]

It's widevine and pepperflash. I was able to disable them in old chrome and had no issues. New chrome and new browsers are changing over because of adobe is closing their doors 2020. It all has to deal with vp9, the codec that the players use.

 

[jeff.goddin]

Unreal engine was my clue. I couldn't scroll down a browser page or watch streaming video without stuttering. I disabled GOG Galaxy in startup and rebooted, problem solved. I'd recently installed XCOM from GOG which runs on the Unreal engine.