buffering .... buffering .... buffering.......

[laruemtt]

can anyone tell me why my brand new sony vaio cannot play through anything without breaking up every few seconds to buffer buffer buffer??? right now i'm 'listening' to charles goyette, and of course, it's stopped to buffer.

i tried five times last night to watch that hysterical video about the SOTU address - it would go for a couple of seconds - stop, buffer - go for another couple of seconds, stop, buffer, etc. forget watching reruns of jon stewart!

HELP! i was so excited to get this laptop but not so much anymore.

btw, have a dsl 510? connection.

[hobbit709]

1. What all is running in the background

The more apps open or in the background the more CPU resources are used. How much RAM? XP is a major memory hog.

[mainegreen]

2. Are the things that buffer only coming down the pipe...

or are some of them local? What I mean is if its a clip from the internet, and it always buffers, if you save it to disk first and *then* try to view/listen to it does it still buffer? If its only from the internet, you might need to change the settings of whatever application you use to buffer more data before starting playback. If even local things buffer, well, I'd recommend reformatting, because if things are that bad you ain't never going to clean that registry up!

[laruemtt]

3. thanks for the suggestions.

i shut down all windows except what i want to watch. i know this is going to sound stupid but how do i save a video from the internet onto my hard drive? i right clicked and copied and pasted it to c, but it just takes me right back to explorer to play it. i don't get it. i had the same specs on my gateway laptop and had no problems running things. i don't have a clue how to reformat. oy.

[mainegreen]

4. Well it's easier to save some video/audio locally than others...

But for example, on crooksandliars.com you can right click the hyperlinks that open the video/audio and choose "save target as..." (or "save link as..." in firefox) and the browser will prompt you where to save the download (firefox might auto-save it now to your desktop). Once you choose where to save the audio/video it will download. Once the download is complete then open it up in the media player of your choice. If you still get buffering you know the problem is systemic, if you don't, then the problem lies in either settings in your media player (try upping the buffer cache size) or in your internet connection.

Cheers!

[laruemtt]

5. thanks mainegreen. it was really weird

but i intentionally stopped it instead of trying to keep hitting go, go, go go. when i started it up again, it played beautifully! it was that hysterical youtube one about the state of the union. i knew it was funny even only getting a few words at a time and was desperate to hear it all. thanks again for all your help. i'll bookmark these suggestions in case it happens again. :toast:

[mainegreen]

6. Then its not a systemic problem!

Thats good news. When you stopped it, it kept buffering, and then hitting play later, you have buffered more, hence clear playback. You can either keep doing this or, as I said, increase the buffer settings before playback on your player. Either way, it's good news for you! :)