Old Flash Works, New Flash Doesn't

[powerphyll]

  I use HBO GO frequently. HBO Go requires a flash player to function. I had an older machine running a 10.something version of flash and all was well.  One day I updated the flash player to 11 and everything went to hell.  It alternated between a resolution that was so poor that it you can barely recognize the faces or good resolution and a frame rate that looks like a sequence of stills. I quickly did a system restore to a date when all was well on the theory it would dump the new flash version and go back to the older working version. IT WORKED!  However that hard drive is old and acting like it may fail soon so I put in a new hard drive and copied over files and installed programs. Unfortunately flash installed Ver. 11. Now I'm back to that same problem.

     I have increased the memory in the flash settings.

     I have increased the page file memory dramatically.

     I have checked my download speed (5 megs). Theoretically 3 should be sufficient for HD (I'd be satisfied with standard resolution).

     I have checked my hardware and all meets the specs necessary for proper performance, (6 GB processor, 518 Mhz RAM, 128 Mhz graphics card RAM.

     I'm runnig XP Sp 3.

     I have tried installing an older version of flash off Adobe developer files but HBO GO doesn't seem to recognize the installation and just asks for a new download.

     I looked for some sort of buffer to reaise the settings but can't find more than the above.

   I am out of ideas. Have you got any?

[libflashplayer_so]

it's possible your graphics card doesn't support hardware acceleration or your gpu may not run well under it.  you can try a few things...

disable hardware acceleration

-right click any flash content and select "Settings..."

-click the first tab and uncheck the harware acceleration check box

upgrade your drivers

see if your gpu is unsupported

http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/stage3d-unsupported-chipsets-drivers-flash.html

if all else fails you can revert back to FP10, but it may not have all the security patches that are available in FP11

grab the uninstaller here:

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

grab the archive players here (scroll down the page):

http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html

[powerphyll]

libflashplayer.so -

   Thanks for your reply. I did as you suggested I.E. I upgraded the graphics card driver (it's an Nvidia GeForce FX 5200) and I disabled the hardware acceleration in the Flash Player settings. As to whether the gpu is supported that is still murky.  Also the cpu is on an Intel motherboard and is an X86 family, 2593 Mhz. I also uninstalled Ver 11 and installed two versions of Ver. 10.__ uninstalling between.

   But there was no change and the problem remained unaltered.

   However I had installed the old harddrive which didn't have this problem as a slave so I could copy files over so I put I tried installing it as the master and made the new hard drive the slave. Therefore the old software and all the old settings including the old Ver. 10 Flash Player would function. AND IT WORKED!  HD resolution and a reasonable frame rate although not perfect.

     So that pretty much rules out the graphics card, the cpu, and any other hardware (except the hardrives) or their settings as the source of the problem. The only software differences - apart from the Flash version - are the old drive's XP Sp2  and the new drive's XP Sp3.  But that shouldn't have much bearing as far as I can see and if it did it should be an improvement not a cause of failure.

     So I remain stumped. My only hard clue is that upgrading Flash Player to Ver. 11 created the problem and a system restore to an earlier date fixed the problem (changing Flash back to an older version). I hesitate to upgrade the old XP Sp2 to Sp3 to test that possibility because at least I have a working connection to HBOGO until such time as the old hard drive fails and then I'm back to square one.

     It just feels like it's overunning a buffer or not downloading fast enough but unlike a media player you can't see the download compared to the playback. That might be instructive if anybody knows how to determine that.

     Any comment would be appreciated.