Sound and Video out of Sync with Adobe Flash

Had an old laptop (eMachines M5305) hooked up to the TV for internet viewing. It worked fine until last week, when audio suddenly began to precede video in the Flash plugin by 1-2 seconds. More seriously, the machine also began to overheat and randomly shut down.

After trying a system restore and failing to repair the video I realized that the problem lay with Flash, which had updated to the 11.7 version from 10.3. Even after a system restore, it refused to roll itself back.

This meant I had to completely uninstall Flash from the machine, by following the steps on this web page: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/uninstall-flash-player-windows.html

Then I had to go to Flash's website to get the 10.3 version. This is stored here: http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/kb/archived-flash-player-versions.html. Scroll down to "Flash Player Archives" and choose the Windows version released on 6/11/2013.

After you have unzipped the download, you'll have several executables to choose from. Be sure to read the readme.txt, which tells you which one you need. Since I use Firefox, I ran the version for Netscape (which is the generic name for Mozilla Firefox, I believe). There are also standalone and IE versions.

After I had installed this I discovered that my sound and video were synchronized again. Problem solved.

Improving Video on the Dell Latitude D630

For several months I have been having video problems with my Dell Latitude D630, a Laptop. After fifteen minutes, streamed video would start to stutter, while sound remained good.

These laptops have had problems for some time with the GPU overheating (Google the problem and you'll find talk of class action suits), and this was causing video problems in many models. The A12 BIOS update claimed to fix that problem. I rolled my BIOS back to A12, but the problem resolved itself for only a few days before recurring.

In the end, the real problem is that the laptop, particularly if heavily used (as mine is), is just showing its age. Overburdening the video chips will cause them to overheat and malfunction.

The solution isn't ideal, but streaming video will no longer stutter. Go to the Control Panel and open the NVIDIA Control Panel. Select "Adjust Image Setting with Preview" and click the "Use My Preference emphasizing:" radio button. Pull the slider to the left so that Performance is emphasized, not quality.

That should take some pressure off the video circuitry. For "Display Resolution" pull the slider to the middle and select 1280 x 720. This will make the text on your screen a bit bigger and fuzzier.

For "Color Quality" pull the slider to the middle and select "Medium" (16-bit color). This will make your video image a little less than excellent, but fine for everyday viewing.

After I had done these things my video streamed as normal.