Does anybody have any idea why whenever I video stream something it keeps buffering. I mean like 10 seconds of buffering for every one second of play. Also, I checked my Internet speed through http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ and it states that my download speed is 1640 kbps (upload is 575), which should be more than fast enough to stream anything instantaneously (as was the case before - now, for example, when I try to watch something on YouTube, it keeps buffering, while before it would start instantaneously). This happens whether I'm trying to use Windows Media Player, Adobe Flash Player or any other type of video streaming device. Also, my ability to go from web page to web page appears to be as fast as before (in other words, web pages are still loading quickly for me), but video streaming is crawling to a standstill. Any ideas? Thanks in advance for any help you can give.
Are you downloading a torrent? Something is keeping the streaming video data from coming to your computer at a fast enough rate to eliminate the buffering.
No - this happens even when it is the only thing running. Is it possible I might have some kind of virus?
I've run Ad-Aware 2007, Spyware Doctor, SpyBot, Spyware Blaster and the most recent Malicious Software Removal Tool from Microsoft, but no help whatsoever. When I do CTRL-ALT-DEL and look up processes, "System Idle Process" is constantly taking up 90+ percent of the CPU. Right now I'm trying to video stream something off the Internet onto my Windows Media Player and it is literally buffering 10 seconds for every 1 second of play.
Try bringing up Task Manager (right click in the task bar and select "Task Manager") and bring up the Networking tab. See if something is using your bandwidth when you are not running anything. There are also other tools out there, often free, to give you more in-depth information. Your connection could also be sporadic - fast for short bursts and then long periods of nothing. That happens to me once in a while. See if you can find a network meeter that gives you realtime readings instead of an average over a period of time.
Thanks for the replies. When I pull up the Networking tab, the "Wireless Network Connection 2" dribbles close to 0% while playing and while buffering (sometimes staying right at 0% for five seconds at a time), but when it started playing it jumped up to the first bar (2.5%), then back to dribbling along the bottom until it starts playing again (no jump whatsoever this time). Wow, all of a sudden it started bouncing back and forth between 0% and ~0.4%, regardless of what was happening with the Windows Media Player. Now it's been doing that for the past several minutes ("System Idle Process" remains at 98% of the CPU under the "Processes" tab). I'm not exactly sure what I should be looking for here. Unfortunately this has been going on for days and has been constant, not sporadic. I can access web pages and the Internet at pretty fast speeds, same as before, but absolutely everything I try to stream, from Windows Media Player to You Tube, constantly buffers. Not sure about realtime readings, but when I check my speed, I watch the number throughout the entire process and it's always close to what it ends up being. Unsure if that's what you meant though.
It seems to me that for some reason video traffic is being marked as "bulk" and being made lower priority somewhere between the server and you, and loosing out to other traffic. You *may* want to contact your ISP's tech support.
When you wrote "lower priority," a *light bulb* went off in my head - I went to Windows Task Manager, Processes, Windows Media Player, right-clicked that line and changed the priority from "Normal" to "Realtime" and that seems to help. Outstanding - thanks a lot! It hasn't buffered at all for the last several minutes of streaming (I'm trying to watch the Celtic-Aberdeen Scottish Cup quarterfinal game from earlier today off of Celtic's Channel 67 subscription service and it had been really frustrating to have it literally spending more time buffering than playing the game -- but it has played straight through for about 10 minutes right now, so it appears I'm good to go! thanks for your help ).
Awesome - I watched the entire rest of the game (from around the 20th minute on) with only one instance of buffering. Thanks so much for the help.