YouTube Videos Not Playing Properly in Google Chrome and Firefox

Recently somebody I know was experiencing a problem in his Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. When trying to view a video in YouTube, the video wouldn’t play properly. It would either have no sound or completely stop after playing for a few seconds. It could only really be 2 possibilities, and that is an unstable internet connection or flash player has a problem since YouTube uses flash player to stream its videos. It was confirmed that the problem only appeared in Chrome and Firefox but worked perfectly in Internet Explorer browser.

Youtube stops playing video in few seconds

Immediately, this tells us that the installed flash player is either corrupted or an outdated version of flash is being used which doesn’t support YouTube or is not properly compatible with the specific versions of Chrome or Firefox. The solution to fix this problem is to completely uninstall the currently installed flash player, download the latest version and then install it.

Here are the detailed steps:

For Chrome users

These days where Chrome is concerned, things are getting a little tricky because the Adobe Flash player used in Chrome is now integrated within Chrome itself. This means that uninstalling Flash from Control Panel or using the Flash Player Uninstaller tool will have no effect on Chrome’s Flash Player. You will either need to remove and reinstall Chrome completely or wait until there is an update in which case the Flash plugin component will get updated at the same time.

However, there is a workaround which can force Chrome to use the standard Flash Player by disabling the integrated plugin meaning you can update, remove, or reinstall as normal.

1. Type chrome://plugins into the Chrome address bar.

2. Click on Details at the far right to expand the list and look for a section entitled Flash in which you might have 1, 2 or possibly 3 dll files listed.

3. Look at the Location of each of these files and click the disable link for gcswf32.dll and pepflashplayer.dll too if you have it. Both files should have Google\Chrome\Application\ in the path and come from the Users folder.

Disable Flash in Chrome

If you also have a DLL located in C:\Windows this is the standard Flash Player and you can leave it enabled and try to see if Flash works now Chromes own player is turned off. If it still doesn’t work then follow the steps to reinstall a new version of the Flash Player. If you don’t have a Flash DLL with a location in C:\Windows, simply follow the procedure to install the Flash Player.

Uninstall and Reinstall Flash Player

Instead of uninstalling flash player from Control Panel, I’d suggest you to use the official uninstaller provided by Adobe. There is one version of Adobe Flash Player uninstaller for Windows, and a few different ones for Mac. Before running the uninstaller, make sure you’ve closed all your web browsers, any games and also instant messenger programs such as Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live Messenger because the uninstaller cannot remove files currently in use. Click Yes when asked to confirm if you want to uninstall Adobe Flash Player and click Close.

Uninstall Adobe Flash Player for Windows

Uninstall Adobe Flash Player for Mac OS

Once you’ve finished uninstalling Adobe Flash Player, now download the latest version of Flash Player from the link below.

Download latest Adobe Flash Player

This page will let you manually select what operating system you are on and what browser you are trying to install the latest Flash Player for. Choose your operating system from the dropdown in step 1, and for Windows choose “Flash Player for other browsers” in step 2. Make sure to untick the adware option and click the button to download.

Reinstall Flash

When the download has completed, again close any web browsers and instant messengers that are currently running, then run the installer.

Now you should have no problems in viewing videos that requires Flash Player. If it still didn’t work, just restart your computer after the flash update. Chrome users can continue to use this Flash Player until the next Chrome update where you can try again from the chrome://plugins page by enabling the internal version if you wish. If not, just carry on using this separately installed version.

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