Why does Firefox 6.0.2 freeze when attempting to play Youtube videos after you enable Hyper-V in Win8 Preview?

Question

I really don't know how these 2 things are related, but all was working fine with Firefox 6.0.2 on my Win8 preview until I installed the Hyper-V feature.  When I restarted my PC, after the Hyper-V install, every time that I tried to view a Youtube video in Firefox 6.0.2 the video window would turn green and I would still hear the audio, but Firefox would freeze and not respond.  I had to kill Firefox from the Task Manager.

Thinking this may be a plugin issue in Firefox, I disabled all plugins and the issue continued.  Then, I uninstalled the Flash plugin from Win8P and installed an older version that worked.  Still had the same issues.

So I removed Hyper-V and "poof", like magic I could view Youtube videos in Firefox 6.0.2 again.

I re-activated all of my plugins, and Youtube still worked in Firefox.

I uninstalled the older version of flash and Firefox still worked fine with Youtube videos.

Not really sure what in Hyper-V would break Firefox/Youtube....but its there....somewhere....

Answer 1

I haven't experienced this myself, but my best guess is that the video support in Hyper-V isn't quite ready for primetime yet. (i.e. the Hypervisor isn't quite handling flash correctly)

Do HTML 5 videos (H.264 stuff) work fine?

Answer 2

I only tested FF 6.0.2 and Youtube.  I was having issues that prevented me from getting my daily work done, and I concentrated on that issue.

I can do some more testing on Hyper-V later...but I am running Win8 in production (I know they said not to - but how else will you really put it to the test?) and I have some work to get done.

Just wanted to let everyone know that there is an issue.

It's only the second issue that I have had - the first being not able to install Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5.  Overall, it is extremely stable for a preview release.  Color me impressed.

Answer 3

Thank you for posting your feedback, we want to make sure we get the right info including your log files.  Can you also submit feedback using the Windows Feedback Tool from the Connect Site associated with your Windows Developer Preview program? If you’re an MSDN subscriber, the information on how to join the Connect program is included on the download page where you installed Windows Developer Preview.  There’s a link to the Connect site and an invitation code that you can click on to join using a Windows Live ID account. If you’re not an MSDN subscriber follow this limited use link to join the Connect program and then follow the steps here. 

---

Marilyn

Answer 4

Didn't Firefox 7 come out yesterday? Have you tried it on that? How about on Nightly? Do you expirience the same issue using those versions? How about other browsers? On 64bit flash/nightly? On vimeo? The green sounds like graphics card artifacting, and considering that some versions of flash are hardware accelerated, that could also be an issue, what card are you using, and have you updated the drivers for it? Finally, does this just happen on one computer, or is it happening on multiple machines? (don't know if you can test that but it might help narrow down the causes)

Answer 5

Marilyn - I have done as you asked and submitted the report along with a screen capture.

For those of you following along at home...Enabling Hyper-V will currently disable the playback of Flash video (like on Youtube) in Firefox 6.0.2, Firefox 7, Chrome 14 and IE 10.  It also disables the viewing of HTML5 videos in IE 10.

Disabling Hyper-V returns these capabilities to your browsers.

Not sure why....

Answer 6

Didn't Firefox 7 come out yesterday? Have you tried it on that? How about on Nightly? Do you expirience the same issue using those versions? How about other browsers? On 64bit flash/nightly? On vimeo? The green sounds like graphics card artifacting, and considering that some versions of flash are hardware accelerated, that could also be an issue, what card are you using, and have you updated the drivers for it? Finally, does this just happen on one computer, or is it happening on multiple machines? (don't know if you can test that but it might help narrow down the causes)

Yes.  Firefox 7 is also affected.  I have not tried a nightly build.

As Firefox 6.0.2, Firefox 7, Chrome 14 and IE 10 are all affected, I think the issue is with Flash and Win8 and not with any particular browser build.

Vimeo fails too.

I am using ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5870 with 1GB RAM.  It is using the "ATI Radeon Mobility HD 5800 (Engineering Sample)" driver provided to Microsoft for the Win 8 Dev Preview.

I have only tested it on my ASUS G73jh.

When you try and view a flash video with Hyper-V enabled, the video gets a green screen of death but the audio still works.  The browsers all lock up, with Chrome being the only browser that seems to identify the problem as a Shockwave Flash Error and gives you a chance to stop the plugin.  Firefox must be stopped from Task Manager and IE just crashed when I clicked the close tab X on the tab with the video control.

 

 

Answer 7

I have Hyper-V enabled and Youtube videos play fine in multiple browsers. I tried to replicate what you describe with both Flash 10 and 11, but didn't have any problems.

 

Answer 8

I have

  1)  Adobe Flash Player 11 ActiveX 64-bit version 11.0.1.129

  2)  Adobe Flash Player 10 Plugin version  10.3.183.10

  3)  Adobe Flash Player 10 ActiveX version 10.1.52.14 installed.

maybe there is a conflict between 1 & 3....

I can post videos of the issue, but I have to piece them together because of the restart after enabling Hyper-V.

Why would Hyper-V affect anything to do with Flash or the browsers?

All I can tell you is that with Hyper-V simply enabled (never even opened - never a single setting even seen, much less changed in Hyper-V), Shockwave Flash components freeze and take the browsers with them.

As soon as I uninstall Hyper-V, everything is back to normal.

The enabling/installation of Hyper-V is the only thing changing in my testing.

I submitted a feedback report, but I think that the feedback wizard tells you not to look for any word from Microsoft concerning the errors you submit (which kinda sucks really).

So, unless Marilyn can follow up with us, we may never know why this happened.