Adobe Flash Problem (I think)?

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TheLordsServant

Gawd
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I inherited a computer from a friend. It's a long story, but I finally got the machine to boot up, and it's currently running Windows XP SP2. It has an Asus P4C-800-E Deluxe motherboard, Pentium 4 3.4ghz CPU, with a GeForce2 MX400 64MB AGP 8X video card.


The problems I am experiencing include: I can't see the little thing at the bottom of Youtube videos that allows me to select 480p or HD resolutions, even on videos that are HD. I also can't load Hulu at all. The Hulu main page comes up with an error that says "A download error occurred, please try again later" I tried reinstalling Firefox and Flash Player. Do any of you have any ideas? I'm thinking maybe trying to reinstall the OS, but that's my only thought. My brother, who is taking computer science in college thinks that the video card may not support Flash player?


Any help would be greatly appreciated!
 
If that is your brother's answer, tell him to study harder....much harder.

Have you tried IE instead of Firefox? Have you completely removed Flash from the computer and then reinstalled it? Have you copied a flash movie out of your Internet cache and tried playing it locally in either web browser?
 
I typed out a really long post earlier with tons of info and, well, I decided it was too much even for me. :)

Simple stuff, the condensed version:

- If it's the original installation the previous owner had on it, it's time to start clean.
- If it's the original XP SP2 installation, it's most definitely time to start clean, with a proper XP SP3 installation (you can make a CD that's got SP3 integrated in under 20 minutes, if that much time)
- Once the new installation is done, hit Windows Update, get everything updated, reboot, hit it again, get it updated, hit it again, the third pass should be all it takes to cover everything.
- Install Microsoft Security Essentials and update that then do a full scan (not the quick one, do the full scan the first time then quick for passes thereafter)
- Install all the most current drivers for all your hardware
- Image it if you're so inclined so it's a "base" installation you can always fall back on and not have to do all this again - use something like Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost, etc
- Install the latest beta of the Flashplayer from here: http://labs.adobe.com - it won't do any GPU acceleration because your video card is so old but it'll still be better than the stock Flashplayer (get both the ActiveX version for IE and the other one for other browsers like Firefox, install both of them)
- Install the latest version of Firefox (3.6.3) and do what have you

See if that makes a difference, which I'm quite positive it will. A bit complicated yes, but that "hand me down" installation of XP SP2 is most assuredly in need of a clean wipe and installation for better performance all around with no leftover "garbage" to muck things up. Should find everything works better than it did if you can accomplish this...
 
Absolutely reload the OS. You'll be fixing this as well as who knows what other corruptions or problems that exist.
 
Well, since I have been really busy with finishing the school year, I was trying to just make it work without reloading, but I realized there were lots more problems with it. So, I finally gave up and took a few hours to install Windows 7 Professional, and now it runs beautifully. I did get a GeForce FX 5600 video card for it that was in an old Duron 900 I had sitting around, because I was having a hard time using the Geforce 2 under Windows 7.


That's what I thought of my brother's answer, I didn't think that could possibly be, but I'm not exactly an expert.


So, it was just the operating system, obviously. Thanks for your help, guys!
 
But still the recommendation holds for using that Flashplayer 10.1 release candidate, just in case. ;)

The new video card still won't be supported but, it's still better than the "stock" Flashplayer and it's almost finished as well.
 
EWWW....GeForce 5600... I remember trying to play Halo: Combat Evolved on that... heh.
 
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