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Windows 11 24H2 Youtube endless buffering

Paul 0 Reputation points
2025-10-25T17:04:39.9466667+00:00

I have finally updated Windows from 23H2 to 24H2 and now everything I'm trying to watch on Youtube starts to buffer after couple of seconds. Video for some reason starts on 480p, then buffers and its unwatchable. I've already went back to 23H2 where everything is ok couple of times, but I don't want to do this over and over again. All necessary updated are installed, drivers, bios, everything. First time I installed this 24H2 update was back in february and to this date this problem exists. From my side everything is ok so why is this happening. It's not possible that this problem is still unsolved.

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Windows update
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  1. Lychee-Ng 7,840 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator
    2025-10-26T11:23:42.9766667+00:00

    Hi Paul,

    Welcome to Microsoft Q&A!

    The symptoms you’re describing can be coming from network stack changes and hardware acceleration conflicts. Since everything works fine on 23H2, this is likely not a hardware or driver fault but rather a compatibility issue between the new OS build and browser/video rendering:

    1 - Disable hardware acceleration:

    • Open your browser > navigate to Settings > search acceleration
    • Turn OFF “Use hardware acceleration when available” (or similar)
    • Restart the browser completely and test YouTube video again

    2 - Check for newer Windows updates:

    • Microsoft has released Windows 11 25H2, which may have included a specific fix for this.
    • Check if your system is available for this update (or manually Download Windows 11)

    3 - Disable TCP/IP auto-tuning:

    • Right-click Windows logo in the Taskbar > Terminal (Admin) to open PowerShell
    • Enter netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=disabled
    • Restart your computer and test YouTube.
    • If this doesn't work or causes other issues, re-enable it with netsh int tcp set global autotuninglevel=normal

    4 - Force YouTube to use HTML5 player without experimental flags

    • Open browser://flags (e.g. edge://flags or brave://flags) > Reset all flags to default
    • If the issue still persists, Disable the following flags:
      • Hardware-accelerated video decode
      • Hardware-accelerated video encode
      • Experimental QUIC protocol
    • Test them one by one, in pairs, or all at the same time. If none works, you can re-enable it.

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    User's image

    5 - Other checks:

    • Try a different browser if possible: E.g. Firefox (it uses a different rendering pipeline). If it works fine, the issue is browser-specific
    • Temporarily disable your antivirus/firewall software (especially third-party ones)

    Disclaimer: Temporarily turning off real-time protection may make your device vulnerable to threats. So please turn it on immediately once the issue is fixed.

    If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

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