Screen tearing in youtube videos only

Windows 7 Screen Tearing - Online Videos Only

I think, I just think, I may have discovered a way to end a screen tearing issue that has been troubling me for a while, and to which there seemed to be no solution.

I have no technical expertise. In fact, I'm a technophobe who thinks that successfully inserting a disc into a Bluray player is a commendable achievement. But I thought it might be worthwhile to describe some of the actions I've taken this evening which seem (for some reason which the techies here may be able to explain) to have solved the problem for me and which - just possibly - may help others who have suffered similarly.

Background: Whenever I watched videos on-line (eg Youtube, Vimeo, IMDB trailers) I had a single line screen tear towards the top of my screen. In Chrome the tearing was slight but nevertheless noticeable (especially when I started to fixate about it, which I'm inclined to do). The same applied to Firefox and Opera. In IE11 the tearing was abominable - from top to bottom of the screen. Curiously, if I watched any video off-line (eg a DVD or Bluray) there was no screen tearing at all.

I tried all the suggestions - turning Aero on, turning it off; enabling NVidia vsynch (GT440) ; turning on hardware acceleration; and so on and so forth. I even bought a new monitor and HDMI cable. But all to no avail: the screen continued to tear.

And then I did the following:

1. I switched to an Aero theme in the Personalisation page. (Right-click desktop.)

2. I clicked on the Windows Colour theme at the bottom of the Personalisation page in the hope of turning on Transparency (I think I may have read somewhere that this could help in some way to solve the screen tearing problem).

3. A transparency option was not available, and so I closed the Personalisation page.

4. I downloaded DirectX 9. I have DirectX 11 installed, but I read on the Microsoft website that Aero only worked with DirectX 9. So I installed it.

5. I typed "services.msc" in the search box on the start menu.

6. I scrolled down to "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager". Whatever this mouthful is, it wasn't working. So I right-clicked it and started it. I had read somewhere that if it is already working, then it should be stopped by right-clicking, and then restarted.

7. I went back to the Personalisation page, selected an Aero theme, pressed the Windows Colour button and - hey presto - the transparency option page appeared. I ticked "Enable Transparency", and left the colour intensity unchanged.

8. I reopened YouTube, loaded a video, and found that the screen tearing had gone. I then fell off my chair.

As I say, I have no technical knowledge of such matters, and so have no idea if (and if so, why) the steps above are responsible for solving the tearing problem. Perhaps installing DirectX 9 helped; or perhaps the transparency enablement made the difference; or perhaps it was the two combined. But it may be worth trying out these steps if, as I have done, you have experimented with all the different suggested combinations and have succeeded in doing more than losing the will to live.

Holy shit thank you so much! I was playing with my theme settings earlier today and was wondering what's wrong with youtube...

I SECOND THAT! Who would have thunk?!
Long live Windows 7! Keep what freedoms we can!
(new CPUs mandate windows 10 for all updates. Can't even use Windows 8 sadly)

Windows 7 Screen Tearing - Online Videos Only

I think, I just think, I may have discovered a way to end a screen tearing issue that has been troubling me for a while, and to which there seemed to be no solution.

I have no technical expertise. In fact, I'm a technophobe who thinks that successfully inserting a disc into a Bluray player is a commendable achievement. But I thought it might be worthwhile to describe some of the actions I've taken this evening which seem (for some reason which the techies here may be able to explain) to have solved the problem for me and which - just possibly - may help others who have suffered similarly.

Background: Whenever I watched videos on-line (eg Youtube, Vimeo, IMDB trailers) I had a single line screen tear towards the top of my screen. In Chrome the tearing was slight but nevertheless noticeable (especially when I started to fixate about it, which I'm inclined to do). The same applied to Firefox and Opera. In IE11 the tearing was abominable - from top to bottom of the screen. Curiously, if I watched any video off-line (eg a DVD or Bluray) there was no screen tearing at all.

I tried all the suggestions - turning Aero on, turning it off; enabling NVidia vsynch (GT440) ; turning on hardware acceleration; and so on and so forth. I even bought a new monitor and HDMI cable. But all to no avail: the screen continued to tear.

And then I did the following:

1. I switched to an Aero theme in the Personalisation page. (Right-click desktop.)

2. I clicked on the Windows Colour theme at the bottom of the Personalisation page in the hope of turning on Transparency (I think I may have read somewhere that this could help in some way to solve the screen tearing problem).

3. A transparency option was not available, and so I closed the Personalisation page.

4. I downloaded DirectX 9. I have DirectX 11 installed, but I read on the Microsoft website that Aero only worked with DirectX 9. So I installed it.

5. I typed "services.msc" in the search box on the start menu.

6. I scrolled down to "Desktop Window Manager Session Manager". Whatever this mouthful is, it wasn't working. So I right-clicked it and started it. I had read somewhere that if it is already working, then it should be stopped by right-clicking, and then restarted.

7. I went back to the Personalisation page, selected an Aero theme, pressed the Windows Colour button and - hey presto - the transparency option page appeared. I ticked "Enable Transparency", and left the colour intensity unchanged.

8. I reopened YouTube, loaded a video, and found that the screen tearing had gone. I then fell off my chair.

As I say, I have no technical knowledge of such matters, and so have no idea if (and if so, why) the steps above are responsible for solving the tearing problem. Perhaps installing DirectX 9 helped, or perhaps the transparency enablement made the difference, or perhaps it was the two combined. But it may be worth trying out these steps if, as I have done, you have experimented with all the different suggested combinations and have succeeded in doing more than losing the will to live.