Blank video with sound okay, driver update fix is temporary

[Larry Sabo]

I've been trying everything I could find on this one, but having no luck. Win 7 Professional x64 SP1 in an HP ProBook 4530s displays the video portion of some videos as black, but has the accompanying sound okay. If I update the display adapter driver (Radeon HD 7470M) by choosing let me pick from a list of devices on my machine, the problem is solved--until I close and re-open Internet Explorer. The same video plays normally in Firefox. Updated Flash Player to latest version: no change. I deleted the driver and its files, scan for changes and it detected a Radeon HD 6490M, which exhibits the same problem. Since I couldn't find the HD 7490M driver on HP's site, I restored it using system restore. I've reset IE but it made no difference.

Perviously, I had run Tweaking.com's AIO Windows Repair because of this and other (permissions) problems. I hate being beaten by these things, but I've several hours into it am and close to reaching for the big hammer.

Any suggestions?

Edit: forgot to mention, they use AVAST Free A-V.

 

[Pants]

The same video plays normally in Firefox.

Ok, so it's a browser issue isolated to IE. Is Windows up to date?

Does IE play flash content on other websites OK, or is it only one website? If it's just one website, there might just be a problem with the way IE is rendering the web content for that particular stream....ie Problem with the server content maybe.

The current version of flash and the one you updated FROM may have problems with the particular content you are trying to view. Maybe try an earlier version of Flash, also?

 

[Mike McCall]

Yeah, I think it might be an IE thing. Have you tried this?

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2532294

 

[Pants]

Adjusting the Flashplayer settings could actually do something, also.

 

[Martyn]

If you gave D7II run all the plugin tests making sure that IE is the default browser. Does that work?

 

[Larry Sabo]

Ok, so it's a browser issue isolated to IE. Is Windows up to date?

Does IE play flash content on other websites OK, or is it only one website? If it's just one website, there might just be a problem with the way IE is rendering the web content for that particular stream....ie Problem with the server content maybe.

The current version of flash and the one you updated FROM may have problems with the particular content you are trying to view. Maybe try an earlier version of Flash, also?

Windows is up-to-date, other videos (from other sites, that is), play fine as do problematic site videos in Firefox. I tried to revert to IE10 but after removing IE 11 via Control Panel Windows Features and downloading IE 10, the install says a more current version is already installed, IIRC. It may have said another installation has not completed, so I'm not certain at the moment.

 

[Larry Sabo]

Yeah, I think it might be an IE thing. Have you tried this?

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2532294

Thanks Mike. I tried some of those but will go through the article when I'm at the laptop later. (I'm having my morning coffee away from my work area at the moment). Also checked Flash Player settings and updating FP again. No joy.

 

[Larry Sabo]

If you gave D7II run all the plugin tests making sure that IE is the default browser. Does that work?

Thanks Martin. I use d7 (not d7II) but will check to see if it includes the plug-in tests. Will also verify that IE is the defauklt browser, although I don't understand how it would cause the problem, since I opened IE and went to the problematic site directly (theweathernetwork). I went though about 10 articles Google proffered with no joy.

 

[Larry Sabo]

http://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2532294

I went through all the steps in that article and disabling hardware acceleration fixed the problem. I take that as a hardware, not driver problem, so I'm just going to leave H/W rendering turned off. The best driver is already installed. This is no gaming machine but it's no slouch either (Win7 Pro SP1, i7-2670M @ 2.2GHz with 8GB RAM) and my customer just needs it to work as a normal user would use it. Thanks for all the helpful suggestions.