 Hello everybody! Today I will tell you why videos start lagging on a computer and how to fix this problem. We will discuss those watching videos from the hard disk and watching them online in your browser. Dear friends, if you need to recover deleted data, use utilities by Hetman Software. Follow the link in the description to visit our website, download a utility for free and install it. Then start disk analysis. When the process is over, it will show the files available for recovery, and you will be able to bring them back. Our blog features quick guides to solve all kinds of problems faced by Windows users. Our channeling blog offers solutions for any issues from installing the operating system to remote administration and connecting mobile devices. Our specialists will be glad to answer your questions in comments to videos and articles. By the word lagging, I mean delays, freezes and jerks when playing videos, various artifacts on the screen, sound stuttering and delays. It can happen because of the computer's weak hardware or because of its general performance. First of all, computer performance is influenced by the condition and performance of its hardware elements. If you have an old and weak computer with an integrated graphics, weak processor and 1 GB of system memory, it is no use trying to play 4K or 8K videos. It will not work. Such computer needs an upgrade. If you are sure that your computer performs well enough to play videos in good quality and there were no lags before, the first thing you should do is to check the temperature of its graphics card and processor. The overheating reduces computer performance greatly. I have already made a video about checking and reducing the temperature of a graphics card, processor or hard disk. I will give the link in the description. After that, have a look at overall system performance. If Windows is set up incorrectly, performance will get worse. In a previous video, I've already spoken about some basic things to help you speed up your computer and how to set up your Windows for maximal performance. You will find the link in the description. Having checked the previous things, let's go on to possible software problems that influence video playback. There are so many of them, but we will focus on the most widespread aspects. Video codecs absent or obsolete If the computer is missing the video codec used for compressing the video, or the codec is out of date, videos can become lagging. There are codec packages containing free codecs and utilities. Among others, K-Lite codec pack mega is certainly worth your attention. You will find the link to the official website in the description. Just download and install it. Graphics card drivers missing or obsolete Drivers can cause a graphics card to work incorrectly. I mean when drivers are missing or when they don't match a particular device. It can happen after replacing a graphics card or reinstalling Windows. To update graphics card drivers, go to Device Manager – Display Adapters. Right-click on your graphics card and select Update Driver Software. Sometimes Windows cannot find and install the proper driver and insist on choosing drivers for a standard VGA adapter. In this case, go to your graphics card manufacturer's website to download and install the latest drivers. To learn the model of a graphics card, you should start a hardware checking utility such as AIDA. It will give you all the information about your computer's hardware. Videos may be lagging because there are too many processes running in the background mode, which generate 100% usage. It happens when users install several antiviruses, dozens of unnecessary programs which only waste the system memory, a lot of games that download stuff from the Internet, and so on. In this case, clean the computer from unnecessary software by deleting it. Cleaning the registry and start-up is also a good idea. You will learn more in another video. You will find a link in the description. Viruses Unfortunately, some users don't monitor their computer security. As a result, the operating system can be infected by viruses. Sometimes, videos start lagging because the entire computer starts freezing seriously. In this case, you should use some antivirus software. In our channel, you can find a whole series of videos about cleaning the computer from viruses. You can watch them by following the link in the description. I'd like to tell you more about the problems with watching online videos in your browser, for example, on YouTube. Online videos will lag if you have a slow Internet connection. You can check the speed of your connection at speedtest.net. If the speed test shows your connection is slower than the Internet provider promised, and the provider proves there is no problem with access to the Internet, watch our video about testing and boosting your Internet connection speed. You will find the link in the description. If your connection is all right, but videos in your browser are lagging, or you can't play them at all. The problem can be in missing or obsolete version of the Flash Player. To update it, install the latest version of Adobe Flash Player. It is free. You will find the link to the official website in the description. I'd like to say a couple words about possible video lags in Chrome and other browsers based on Chromium. It happens because of a conflict between plugins that play Flash content. The matter is that Chrome has got a built-in Flash Player, and later it may start conflicting with a standalone player, and you can face playback problems. To fix them, make sure you have the latest version of your browser, as the Flash Player is updated when Chrome is updated. Install the latest version, if necessary. After that, go to Chrome Settings, Advanced, System, and disable Use hardware acceleration when available. Open Close and restart the browser, and try playing the video again. If it doesn't work, open this link in your browser – Chrome, Flags, and enable Experimental Functions – Overwrite, Software, Render, and List. Hardware accelerated video decode. As you do that, restart the browser. If it doesn't help, try cleaning the browser cache and deleting cookies, watching videos in another browser, or in incognito mode. I think you know how to do it. However, I'll show you how to clean the browser cache and delete cookies in one of my next videos. The problems I have told you about are the most widespread, but there can be a number of others. Anyway, now you know about those that happen most of the time. That is all for now. If you found this video useful, click the Like button below and subscribe to our channel to see more. Thank you for watching. Good luck.