Old PC wont play youtube videos. CPU problem or something else???

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vagelp

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May 2, 2013
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I have an old PC and i want it for my little son's room only for watching his favourite cartoon on Youtube and to install a few education softwares. But when i try to play videos from Youtube i take a good sound but the video is playing dashed. The system specs are:

CPU: Intel Celeron 1Ghz
RAM: 512Mb
Graphic card: Nvidia Geforce2 mx/mx400
OS: Windows XP sp2

I know that it is very very old pc but i would like to know if there is any solution to fix it without spending more money for that pc because i dont believe its worth it.
 
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vagelp

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May 2, 2013
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10,510
I have allready install adobe flash player but it doesn't help. I also try different browsers(mozilla, opera, chrome) even a lightweight Linux distro but no result.
 
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spartansociety

spartansociety

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Sep 26, 2012
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if it stutters a fair bit but basically plays I have found the browser 'torch' plays alot faster than any other browser (but does not look as good). I dont know if this is too much effort, but you could use the website keep vid or the inbuilt torch downloader to download em all, then play them from media player. If there is nothing worth hacking, you could try deleting any antivirus/other startup programs. If you type 'msconfig' into the command bar you will have access to all the programs that start with startup, you could see if disabling all the non-essential ones helps as well. If its been running for years, a clean install of XP, folllowed by updating to sp3 with no extra programs may even help alot. Prior to my ssd upgrade , i would even notice a difference on my core I5 after a re-install.
 
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T

twelve25

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Oct 8, 2012
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I couldn't get video to stream on a p3 1GHz, either. It's just not enough CPU power to handle receiving and playing video at the same time. It might work with a discrete video card with a video decoder, but honestly probably not worth the hassle for a ~13 year old system.

Even a P4 2.8Ghz HT with onboard graphics i found recently could barely handle streaming youtube, I was at 90% CPU just for 480p and HD was a slideshow.

 
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GhislainG

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Jul 16, 2008
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I observed the same behavior on a P4 2.8 HT with a 1950 Pro GPU. Just not enough CPU power.

 
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cmi86

cmi86

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Sep 29, 2010
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If this is somewhat of a recent problem than I have just gone through the same thing on an old build for a friend. I feel that with recent updates to flash and youtube the code has become too complex making it all of a sudden harder for old hardware to keep up. The system was a P4 540J / 3GB RAM / GT 520 that played youtube and everything else just fine and then one day about 2-3 months ago it just started skipping and lagging and could not be resolved.
 
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