Vista Video Playback Problem

[Knarly Nerd]

Just reloaded Vista after wiping my hard drive...a yearly habit. Now when watching videos such as You Tube or doing video calls on Skype, the video and audio occasionally freeze then restart. That little "circle of rotating balls" appears while the screen is frozen. I have 4g of memory so it's not that. Is there a simple fix for this? Computer is a Dell XPS M1530 laptop running Vista Ultimate, Core 2 Duo 2.4gHz processor and a 300g hard drive.

 

[binaryterror]

Upgrade flash player, shockwave, and java

 

[Knarly Nerd]

Upgrade flash player, shockwave, and java

I did this today but still have the same trouble.

 

[binaryterror]

Might be your internet is slow, or the chosen DNS path is slow to Youtube.

 

[Knarly Nerd]

Might be your internet is slow, or the chosen DNS path is slow to Youtube.

No, it's consistent for all video content online and off.

 

[JoeyK]

video card driver? vista patched to latest?

 

[Knarly Nerd]

video card driver? vista patched to latest?

Yep...I confirmed that last night. I'm really at a loss. I'm tempted to wipe the drive again and start over. However, I'm fearful of putting too much stress on it. This drive is almost two years old and has been in service at least 14 hours a day since it was new in October of '08. Like me, it must be getting old and tired.