Unable to view any Youtube videos: "An error occurred"

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peppergomez

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I just get "an error occured. please try again later" no matter what video I choose, or what resolution. Doesn't matter what browser I use- same result. And my Internet speeds are fine. Pages and emails are loading at normal speeds.
Vimeo works fine...just Youtube...nothing will load.

I made sure flash player was updated, cleared all cookies and cache in all browsers, rebooted, disabled all anti-virus and popup blockers, then tried in again using Opera, Chrome, IE 10, and Firefox. No Youtube videos, no matter what resolution I select, will play in any browser. "An error occurred, please try again later." The "Learn more" option is useless, as they usually are. Any other video site works fine. I get these same results on both computers. Called Time Warner and logically there's nothing wrong on their end, since I have connectivity, so they aren't able to help.

What in fuk's sake is going on here?
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Open the developer tools in either Chrome or IE, start a network capture, then play a video. See what the results are (are there any 404s, aborted requests, 500s, etc.?).
 
Could be just about anything. I've seen those be everything from browser to NATbox related. (friend had that problem, replaced NATbox, no more problem)
 
try removing flash and then reinstalling maybe?


I have that problem on one of my machines with Firefox (since the flash plugin is installed manually) and it's only with youtube. They always work fine of IE though. Sounds to me like flash is the culprit.

What happen if you set it to HTML5?
 
Are you using a proxy?

If so, 'streaming media' could be blocked. This would allow you to get to youtube, but prevent you from viewing videos. It would also explain why it's happening with multiple browsers.

If you aren't using a proxy, make sure it's not configured to 'auto discover'.
 
I have this problem with an ENTIRE ROOM of computers! 80% of all YouTube videos don't play. The resolution keeps jumping from 480p to 360p to 240p to 144p to 720p to 1080p and then fails with "An error occured.". Each resolution gets disabled and greyed out after it fails and jumps to the next resolution.

Even when connecting these computers directly to the Internet with a public IP address without a firewall/gateway the same problem occurs.

Even when using USB tethering through a phone the same problem occurs.

Even when using an SSH tunnel proxy through a remote location the same problem occurs.

There is just one computer where everything plays fine and there is nothing special about it. It's in the same subnet using the same gateway as everything else.

It happens on Windows 7 and Windows 8. It happens on all browsers. It happens with a fully updated Flash player. It happes with Windows 8's built in Flash player for IE10. It happens only on YouTube and no where else. It's been over 3 months since anyone has been able to watch a YouTube video.

If I sniff the HTTP link to the video file I can type it in the URL bar and successfully download the entire video file which plays fine locally.
 
Last edited:
KurianOfBorg said:
I have this problem with an ENTIRE ROOM of computers! 80% of all YouTube videos don't play. The resolution keeps jumping from 480p to 360p to 240p to 144p to 720p to 1080p and then fails with "An error occured.". Each resolution gets disabled and greyed out after it fails and jumps to the next resolution.

Even when connecting these computers directly to the Internet with a public IP address without a firewall/gateway the same problem occurs.

Even when using USB tethering through a phone the same problem occurs.

Even when using an SSH tunnel proxy through a remote location the same problem occurs.

There is just one computer where everything plays fine and there is nothing special about it. It's in the same subnet using the same gateway as everything else.

It happens on Windows 7 and Windows 8. It happens on all browsers. It happens with a fully updated Flash player. It happes with Windows 8's built in Flash player for IE10. It happens only on YouTube and no where else. It's been over 3 months since anyone has been able to watch a YouTube video.

If I sniff the HTTP link to the video file I can type it in the URL bar and successfully download the entire video file which plays fine locally.
Click to expand...

It's a problem with flash and probably security settings I'm guessing.
 
staticlag said:
It's a problem with flash and probably security settings I'm guessing.
Click to expand...

Each resolution plays for several seconds before failing. The higher the resolution the longer it plays before failing. It initially plays for 1 or 2 seconds each and 1080p plays for around 10 seconds. It's as if the TCP connection is being terminated.

I've completely uninstalled Flash. This happens with the built-in Flash plugin on Windows 8 too on a stock installation.
 
An entire room of PCs with the same symptom -- I'd look at hardware and what is unique about them. My guess is they're all they're all the same model -- did you check the NIC driver? Or if they all came from the same image, maybe the image is bad.
 
Demon10000 said:
An entire room of PCs with the same symptom -- I'd look at hardware and what is unique about them. My guess is they're all they're all the same model -- did you check the NIC driver? Or if they all came from the same image, maybe the image is bad.
Click to expand...

Most of them are the same, but there are also many laptops and even a Surface RT which has the same problem. The one computer where it does play is the same model as the bulk of them. They've all been setup manually, not imaged. Some are fresh installations too.

I'm now considering the possibility of some ISP/DNS/geolocation problem.
 
Nothing to add, other than it happened to me before on all my work computers for the entire day. Vimeo worked, same with Hulu and CNN, etc. If I connected a device like a phone and watched Youtube it was fine, just not on any of the computers on the domain. The next day I came in it was working again. I could never find the issue.
 
I've been having a lot of "adobe crashed" errors and also the sound will just cut out while a video is playing until I restart the browser. This is on Waterfox. IE works fine.
 
I solved the problem on the computers here. It was because the audio jack sensing disables the playback device when nothing is connected. The YouTube Flash player fails when there is no audio playback device.
 
KurianOfBorg said:
I solved the problem on the computers here. It was because the audio jack sensing disables the playback device when nothing is connected. The YouTube Flash player fails when there is no audio playback device.
Click to expand...


Could you explain how you solved it?

I have speakers hooked up to my laptop, so there is an audio device connected to my laptop.
 
Snowknight26 said:
Open the developer tools in either Chrome or IE, start a network capture, then play a video. See what the results are (are there any 404s, aborted requests, 500s, etc.?).
Click to expand...

OK, did that, and here is the screenshot. Note that I have installed Java for all browsers I use, but Youtube continues to not work on any browser, or any video. Pissing me off.

Many thanks for any input as to the problem

full-1446-62402-youtube_fail_screenshot.jpg
 
peppergomez said:
Could you explain how you solved it?

I have speakers hooked up to my laptop, so there is an audio device connected to my laptop.
Click to expand...

I simply plugged in headphones. If you have multiple playback devices then disable all except the one you're using. "Not plugged in" is not the same as disabled. Flash player is notorious for trying to use a non-default playback device. On my computer at home it keeps trying to use SPDIF/HDMI when I have Speakers selected. I have to disable the other two to get audio to play through the Speakers device.
 
I fixed the problem permanently by installing the actual sound card drivers instead of using the Microsoft High Definition Audio drivers. I have a Dell so I just went to their site, put in the service tag, showed all drivers, downloaded the SoundMax Integrated etc..., extracted with 7-zip to a directory and updated the drivers manually. Works perfectly in Firefox and IE now (never stopped working in Chrome).

Good luck!

Also plugging in an audio device (headphones/speakers) solved the problem for me before updating the drivers.
 
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