Flashplayer 'stutters' with W2K + IE or FF

[poachedeggs]

I have the latest Flashplayer/Shockwave added to both Internet
Explorer 6 and Firefox 3.01 with my Compaq Deskpro EN (886 mhz, 512
mb, nVidia TNT 2 (latest driver), latest compatible Java). Unlike on
my Vista machine, using either of these browsers seems a bit jerky and
subject to short terms freezes. I've read that this is something for
Adobe to put right, but I imagine they're not going to trouble
themselves too much over older versions of Windows.

Is there anything I can do to smooth things a bit? I remember using
an internet cafe that had XP machines at the time of Flashplayer 9
with the same problems, and any version of Flashplayer earlier than 9
seems useless with many if not most modern websites, and yet the
symptoms didn't show up in _every_ cafe I used, or even on my own old
XP laptop using only dial-up - so maybe there is some other setup move
I can make.

I've tried other browsers, too, but wondered if there might be a
better program than Flashplayer that does the same job for W2K. (I
could be wrong, but in Firefox at least the judders may seem to occur
more when I disable it in view of my gigabyte allowance, but judders
in IE whether it's disabled or not).

Thanks in advance.

 

[someone watching]

replied within:

I have the latest Flashplayer/Shockwave added to both Internet
Explorer 6 and Firefox 3.01 with my Compaq Deskpro EN (886 mhz, 512
mb, nVidia TNT 2 (latest driver), latest compatible Java). Unlike on
my Vista machine, using either of these browsers seems a bit jerky and
subject to short terms freezes. I've read that this is something for
Adobe to put right, but I imagine they're not going to trouble
themselves too much over older versions of Windows.

I'm not convinced it is an OS problem, here's why:
I have a dual boot W98, XP Home setup. They're on an OLD Tyan MOBO (1998
vintage), 550 mhz AMD CPU overclocked to 600, 384 MB RAM. The
'jerkyness' and seeming, intrusive, AWEFUL performance of flash is
almost intollerable. Even navigating ebay is a PAIN with the 'new
experience' search. I end up having to 'opt out' of that experience
every time because flash is just sooo slow, causes my pc to hang
temporarily bla bla bla! So you are not alone in having issues with
flash. But, these annoyances appear in W98 or XP on this old PC, and
BTW, it only happens with internet pages LOADED with all that garbage.

Is there anything I can do to smooth things a bit? I remember using
an internet cafe that had XP machines at the time of Flashplayer 9
with the same problems, and any version of Flashplayer earlier than 9
seems useless with many if not most modern websites, and yet the
symptoms didn't show up in _every_ cafe I used, or even on my own old
XP laptop using only dial-up - so maybe there is some other setup move
I can make.

This confirms what was said above; don't think this is OS dependant but
a HARDWARE issue! For example, I have multiple laptop PC's, all
multiboot (W98, W2K, XP) and none of them show the symptoms you and I
have with our older boxes! And the Thinkpads (laptop's) clock down to
600 mhz for internet browsing, don't even hickup with pages loaded with
flash. So it's probably hardware related. Whether CPU, MOBO chipset,
amount of RAM or video card, not sure; but it's likely one of those
creating the bottleneck.

I've tried other browsers, too, but wondered if there might be a
better program than Flashplayer that does the same job for W2K. (I
could be wrong, but in Firefox at least the judders may seem to occur
more when I disable it in view of my gigabyte allowance, but judders
in IE whether it's disabled or not).

Not sure what you're asking here. Are you asking if there is an
alternative for flash? If so, I've not heard of one (but would sure be
nice if there is a better performing package). And again, not sure what
you are saying in the later statement but if you are saying the
jerkyness continues with flash turned off for web pages, I might suspect
there's something going on with ACCESSING those flash links embedded in
the web page code. I 'think' even though flash is disabled, the embedded
web page code still seeks out those flash links, downloads related
files, but then does not run flash (not sure though). Is all the
seeking, downloading etc. causing our problems?? Is it hardware related
as purposed above?? Don't know!

 

[poachedeggs]

Thanks. Then it seems there was a time when the computer would have
coped, but the web pages are too jazzy now for it. That's okay
really, as I only bought the extra computer to write a novel on, but
have been trying to get it going as slickly as it can for other
tasks. Your diagnosis sounds correct going by what I see, anyway.
I'm tempted to try and install Flash 9 to see if that performs any
better but a lot of people including me have had bother installing and
uninstalling Flash.

Weirdly, the i-cafe I mentioned also did system builds and upgrades so
you'd think he'd use the best chips and cards in his systems. I
remember him several times reinstalling everything on his pcs to get
them going well, but it never worked.

 

[someone watching]

Well, couple other things came to mind. I use a CPU load monitor.
Whenever this jerky condition happens I noticed the CPU monitor spikes
to 100% usage. That of course would cause the computer to slow down,
even appear to stop temporarily, become jerky. On the laptops, even at
600 mhz I don't see flash cause prolonged CPU spikes. So, I wonder if
there is a particular instruction set (on the CPU) flash is looking for
(thus it's looking for certain hardware), not finding that instruction
set it goes into software computation, thus becoming CPU intensive, thus
slowing things down (sometimes intolerably). Or is it possible there are
certain video hardware instructions sets it looks for and when not
finding it (them) goes into software computation mode, thus CPU
intensive, thus jerky, etc.

Oh, BTW I too use IE and FF (v2.??) and results are same as yours (no
matter what OS). So it would seem it is not our software, but lack of
certain hardware causing slow downs with flash.
___
..
Thanks. Then it seems there was a time when the computer would have
coped, but the web pages are too jazzy now for it. That's okay
really, as I only bought the extra computer to write a novel on, but
have been trying to get it going as slickly as it can for other
tasks. Your diagnosis sounds correct going by what I see, anyway.
I'm tempted to try and install Flash 9 to see if that performs any
better but a lot of people including me have had bother installing and
uninstalling Flash.

Weirdly, the i-cafe I mentioned also did system builds and upgrades so
you'd think he'd use the best chips and cards in his systems. I
remember him several times reinstalling everything on his pcs to get
them going well, but it never worked.

 

[Sid Elbow]

I have the latest Flashplayer/Shockwave added to both Internet
Explorer 6 and Firefox 3.01 with my Compaq Deskpro EN (886 mhz, 512
mb, nVidia TNT 2 (latest driver), latest compatible Java). Unlike on
my Vista machine, using either of these browsers seems a bit jerky and
subject to short terms freezes.

You may have done this but ....


If you go here:

http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/microsites/microsite.do

put ' performance ' in the search box and select Flash Player from the
drop-down there are some hits that might help.

System/hardware requirements are shown at:

http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/systemreqs/