There's nothing like a quick YouTube break to shake up the workday monotony, but nothing will stop the show faster than a stalled video stream or a crashing media player. Make these sites your first stops when your media player goes on strike.
YouTube Help Center
The service's own troubleshooting page is a bit too quick to recommend that you uninstall and then reinstall the Adobe Flash Player (cutesy instructional video, though). This may be the surest cure for all types of glitches, but I would begin with the simpler steps the site suggests, such as restarting your browser, accessing the page using another browser, and clearing your browser cache.
The YouTube Help Center can assist you in finding the source of Flash Player glitches.
(Credit: Google/YouTube)In fact, I recommend that you clear your browser cache first; doing so takes only a few clicks and can cure a range of page-loading woes. In Firefox, click Tools > Clear Private Data, uncheck all options except Cache, and click the Clear Private Data Now button. In Internet Explorer, click Tools > Delete Browsing History, and click the "Delete files" button next to Temporary Internet Files.
Adobe offers a Shockwave Player support FAQ site that has a page specific to Windows XP and others that describe various error messages, along with info on other troubleshooting topics. You'll find the latest version of the Flash Player on the Adobe Download Center. The company's Flash Support Center is intended for Flash developers.
Troubleshooting Windows Media Player 11
Microsoft's own troubleshooting page for the media player built into Windows has separate sections for Most Popular Questions, Self-Help Options, and Technical-Support Options, in addition to the standard FAQs on playing DVDs, ripping MP3s, and finding and installing codecs.
There's a separate WMP FAQ page for Windows Vista. In typical Microsoft fashion, there's yet another troubleshooting page that focuses on problems when using the player in XP. And just for good measure, a Knowledge Base article listing troubleshooting resources.
Apple iTunes for Windows
Apple provides separate pages for troubleshooting iTunes video playback on Windows Vista and Windows XP/2000. The company covers "unexpected quits, freezes, and launch issues" on this page for Vista and this page for XP.
Apple QuickTime for Windows
The QuickTime Troubleshooting site lets you tell at a glance whether Apple's media player is installed and functioning (you'll see the animated QuickTime logo in the bottom-right corner if it is).
Make sure QuickTime is installed and working on your PC at Apple's QuickTime Troubleshooting site.
(Credit: Apple)The company's support site offers pages for curing problems when installing QuickTime for Windows, enabling Flash content in QuickTime movies, viewing streamed files behind a firewall, and diagnosing audio-playback problems (which applies to iTunes as well).
The tech community's love affair with the Mozilla Firefox browser shows no signs of waning, but the fact is, most people still use Internet Explorer. If it's such a terrible browser, why does it remain so popular? Part of the reason may be that it's so tightly integrated with Windows: It takes an effort to download Firefox or another alternative browser, while the little blue "e" icon is omnipresent on the desktop, start menu, quick launch toolbar, and elsewhere in Windows.
Never in a million years would I try to talk you out of using IE, but I will do my best to convince IE users to download the free IE7Pro add-in (download) that adds a spell checker, ad blocker, and other useful features to Microsoft's preeminent browser.
Enable scripts in the IE7Pro add-on for Internet Explorer to take advantage of user-created browser enhancements.
IE7Pro benefits from a community of developers who write scripts for the program, similar to the folks who offer add-ins for Firefox. You'll find bunches of these scripts at IEscripts.org. The one I've been fiddling with lately adds a Download Video link to YouTube videos. Unfortunately, you have to convert the file to .flv to save it, and the MiniDM download manager in IE7Pro 2.0 doesn't give you that option. The workaround I found is to copy the video's URL, browse to YouTubeLoader.com, paste the URL into the link box, click Download, right-click the resulting link, choose Save Target As, rename the file in the Save As dialog box (be sure to give it the .flv extension), and click Save.
Rename the video file you're downloading and give it the .flv extension to save it to your PC.
Before you can view the video on your local system, you have to install a player for .flv files. I use the free FLV Player from Martijn de Visser.
Tomorrow: Change your default save-as folder in Windows.
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