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    L501x & Nvidia driver (420m) - can't play vimeo, youtube gives problems

    Discussion in 'Dell XPS and Studio XPS' started by dsutton, Mar 7, 2011.

  1. dsutton

    dsutton Notebook Enthusiast

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    I'm hoping someone can give me some advice here - not really sure what to do.

    I have an L501x with an i5 460M and Nvidia 420M, purchased from the Dell Outlet. I'm having some trouble with my video rendering, and since i haven't been able to solve it, I'm wondering if there could be a problem with my machine.

    I first noticed the problem when I was playing a youtube video. I noticed that the video control button bar was missing - no play/pause button, no transport slider, no full screen button. Nothing. And most of the time, I was unable to see the video in full screen.

    Today I tried vimeo. The video had trouble playing, and then when i put it into full screen, the video froze, and I couldn't escape from full screen. I kept getting an error, asking me if I wanted to close the Shockwave object. I said yes, but it wouldn't close. Ultimately, I had to force a shutdown.

    I uninstalled the nvidia driver, restarted, and then tested both youtube and vimeo again. They worked perfectly.

    I downloaded a fresh copy of the Nvidia driver from the dell site, and reinstalled, the restarted. This time, vimeo was even worse than before the first uninstall. The video wouldn't play at all, and i saw just a bunch of video noise.

    Youtube played the audio, but no video.

    Should I be using a different nvidia driver? Are there other things I can try to fix this problem? Should I contact dell support?

    Thanks in advance for the assistance.
     
    dsutton, Mar 7, 2011
    #1
  2. bbCan

    bbCan Notebook Guru

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    (1) what browser are you using?
    (2) have you tried to download the driver from the Nvidia official website?
    (3) have you reinstalled the flah player?
    (4) make sure your video card is nvidia 420M; you can check this by some utility programs, eg. GPU-Z.
    Hope this helps.



     
    bbCan, Mar 7, 2011
    #2
  3. dsutton

    dsutton Notebook Enthusiast

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    Thanks for the reply.

    I'm using Chrome. I had not yet taken the driver from the Nvidia site.

    I just did that, and lo and behold, it worked perfectly. I feel a little silly for having asked the question in the first place. I should have tried that first :)

    Anyway, all seems well. thanks again for the quick reply.
     
    dsutton, Mar 8, 2011
    #3