playing video crashes to black screen.

First time user of this forum, but I've used the win7 counterpart so I'm hoping the folks here can help.

My wife's computer has the following problem:

If she tries to play a video (i.e. YouTube, Vimeo, Hulu) her system crashes to a black screen and the system shuts off. This occurs anywhere from immediately to after five minutes or so. It's not instantaneous. What is nasty is that if a website has an embedded video she cannot visit that website without crashing (which means most news websites these days).

Sometimes the computer reboots and sometimes she has to manually shut down the power, then reboot the computer which gives the usual message about "you bad person you didn't shut me down properly" , but I have been unable to find any error messages.

Just tested the system with a video DVD rather than streaming and it produced a nearly instant shutdown followed by re-boot, so it's not due to streaming issues.

System: AMD Athlon 64 x2 6000+ up to date in Win XP
Graphics: GE Force 8600 GT
2 GB DDR2

Any assistance would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

Just did a check with the FixIt from Microsoft support pages.

It claims that everything is just tickety-boo.

 

I'm going to leave this up, because I have seen several people asking about similar problems, but, having taken Elizabeth23's sig-line to heart, I continued my search for answers across the internet.

The next thing I tried was Sfc , a Windows system command called System File Checker. It can be found at support.microsoft.com as Article ID: 310747. I ran it from a DOS prompt, but I suspect it can be executed from Run as well. You do need to have your original XP installation media (which took me a while to find ) but, I ran it in the /Scannow mode, let it finish, and the machine is now playing a video and is 20 min in on full screen with no glitches.

So: possibly not the *only* solution, but it worked for me.

 

AAANNND! While the movie player worked playing from a DVD, the first attempted streaming from YouTube did not work -- So there is still a problem.

 

First, there are some steps to take to ensure your pc is clean.

1. do the following:

Download, install, update and do full scan with these free malware detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

Remove all found, reboot, and run again until scans run clean, these can be removed afterwards if you so choose. Run scans one at a time, please.


post back with results

2. since ungraceful shutdowns have occurred then checkdisk must be run, you cannot run it from the cd unless your system is at the same service pack as your cd, which is unlikely unless you have slipstreamed sp3 onto your installation cd.

not to worry, there are other ways

the first is to go to start> run> type in cmd, and click ok

then in the cmd prompt, type in chkdsk c: /r and press enter

type y for yes and press enter

type exit and press enter

then restart pc.

checkdisk will run and will be a lengthy process depending on harddrive size and whether you have defragmented recently.

allow to finish, then run again, and if any more errors are found run again.

you can view reports in event viewer, applications directory, Winlogon heading

you can get to event viewer by going to start/controlpanel/ administrative tools/ event viewer.

While in event viewer, go to each directory, right click and choose clear all entries, (after viewing report for winlogon), you will be prompted to save entries, do so or not your choice, what I want are clean logs to see if an error pops up for any system or app problems.

Here are instructions to burn a cd with the Recovery console:

Here's how to make a bootable xp recovery console cd
Courtesy of JoseIbarra
You need to start by booting into the XP Recovery Console using a CD you can make (no XP media required) and run a chkdsk with error correction enough times until it runs clean and if that doesn't work, you can create a new boot.ini file (it is usually one of those two things).

Here's how:

Use the XP Recovery Console to verify the file system on your HDD and correct any problems and then try to boot your system - this may be all you need to do. Or, you are welcome to just start trying things that might work.

Boot into the Windows Recovery Console using a bootable XP installation CD.
If you have no bootable XP media (or are not sure what you have) create a bootable XP Recovery Console CD and be sure what you have (no XP media required).

This is not the same as any recovery disks that might have come with a store bought system.

You can make a bootable Recovery Console CD by downloading an ISO file and burning it to a CD.

The bootable ISO image file you need to download is called:
rc.iso

Download the ISO file from here:
http://www.thecomputerparamedic.com/?p=8 (courtesy of Daavee)

Use a new CD and this free and easy program to burn your ISO file and create your bootable CD:
http://www.imgburn.com/

When installing ImgBurn, DO NOT install the Ask toolbar.

Here are some instructions for ImgBurn:
http://forum.imgburn.com/index.php?showtopic=61

It would be a good idea to test your bootable CD on a computer that is working.
You may need to adjust the computer BIOS settings to use the CD ROM drive as the first boot device instead of the hard disk. These adjustments are made before Windows tries to load. If you miss it, you will have to reboot the system again.

When you boot on the CD, follow the prompts:

Press any key to boot from CD...
The Windows Setup... will proceed.
Press 'R' to enter the Recovery Console.
Select the installation you want to access (usually 1: C:\WINDOWS)
You may be asked to enter the Administrator password (usually empty).
You should be in the C:\WINDOWS folder. This is the same as the
C:\WINDOWS folder you see in explorer.

The Recovery Console allows basic file commands like: copy, rename, replace, delete, cd, chkdsk, fixboot, fixmbr, etc.

For a list of Recovery Console commands, enter help at the prompt or read about the XP Recovery Console here:
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...ocs/en-us/recovery_console_cmds.mspx?mfr=true

A good idea before starting things is to first verify the integrity of your file system using the chkdsk command.

From the command prompt window run the chkdsk command on the drive where Windows is installed to try to repair any problems on the afflicted drive.
Running chkdsk is fine even if it doesn't find any problems. It will not hurt anything to run it.

Assuming your boot drive is C, run the following command:
chkdsk C: /r

Let chkdsk finish and correct any problems it might find.

It may take a long time for chkdsk to complete or it may appear to be 'stuck'. Be patient. If the HDD light is still flashing, chkdsk is doing something. Keep an eye on the percentage amount to be sure it is still making progress. It may even appear to go backwards sometimes.

You should run chkdsk /r again until it finds no errors to correct.

Remove the CD and type 'exit' to leave the RC and restart the computer.

You do not have to adjust the BIOS again to boot on the HDD since the CD will not be present.


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

once system is clean and no errors are found from checkdisk then we can start troubleshooting video problems, and crashes

 

Just one more note, I like to run checkdisk from the recovery console because I do not have to go to event viewer to see report it will stay on screen until you exit the recovery console.

 

Having seen that post before, Elizabeth23, and having full confidence that a crash that ONLY happened when my wife tried to play videos was not due to an infection or other hardware problems I finally found what appears to have been a solution (i.e. no crashes for 4 days).

Taken from: forums(dot)adobe.com/thread/643581

go to www(dot)adobe(dot)com(slash)software/ flash/about/
right-cick on the Flash object, then select Settings...
on the Display panel, uncheck 'Enable hardware acceleration'

((I had to munge the web addresses because the forum won't let me post links yet.))

Apparently the only way to get to the settings in question is to go to the adobe.com website as specified in the above quote that I got from the Adobe community.

Apparently Adobe Flash does not play nice with hardware acceleration on video cards. Who knew? Anyway. There it is for anyone else who might need a solution.

-- F.

 

Thanks for the update

 

To all in this thread:

HOW TO DOWNLOAD SP3 FOR XP
http://www.computing.net/howtos/sho...ervice-pack-3-sp3-after-april-8-2014/916.html

sp3 is no longer carried at the microsoft download center