Problem on my machine: The green screen flash video playback issue

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I am now running the final (RTM) version of Windows 8 on my HP Envy 17. It had been up and running for few days before I stumbled across the following screen when I tried to playback a flash video:

 

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I poke around on the internet and find this issue has been reported on quite a bit (thanks lifehacker!) with a pretty easy “Solution” (actually a workaround with a penalty).

 

The steps:

  1. Right click on the video and select settings
  2. Deselect the “Enable hardware acceleration”
    image 

 

I go through the steps and… same green screen.

 

I toggle back and forth a few times, restart a few times… nothing… still a green screen.

I decided to poke around in the IE settings. Since a lot more of the apps in Windows 8 take advantage of Hardware Acceleration, I am thinking maybe there is an application setting that comes into play.

 

In IE’s Settings > Advanced options I run across the following option (which I have changed from the default to see if it will help with the green screen issue):

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I tested my flash video. Still not working. Then I note the magic “*” asterisks at the end of the line in the GUI above. Which leads to the text below:

image

 

Never one to take a GUI’s word for it.. I just restart IE instead of the computer. Tada!!! Flash video playback without the green screen on Windows 8!

 

What are the implications of this?

  • No question, the performance of IE can’t be as good as it should be with software rendering.
  • I am of the opinion this has nothing to do with Windows (in fact, turning off hardware acceleration is synonymous with saying “Just let Windows do it”) and everything to do with the ATI drivers for my AMD Radeon HD 6800M. It is a hardware acceleration issue, and this is handled by a combination of DirectX, the video drivers, and the Video Hardware.
  • I will be testing the final versions of ATI’s drivers when they are fully cooked and re-enabling hardware acceleration to see if the issue is resolved.

Hope this post helps prevent others from having to do the research.