This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Suddenly media downloads instead of buffer and stream.

  • 2 majibu
  • 2 wana tatizo hili
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by zaqwert6

more options

All of a sudden Firefox started downloading media player files instead of simply opening a media player and allowing the files to buffer and start playing like it once did.

Used to be you could click on a video link and it would automatically open the appropriate media player and that player would take over from there, basically allowing for a few seconds of buffering and then playing/streaming the video.

One day , Firefox started only ever opening the download dialog box and only giving you those options which force you to wait for the entire video to download before it will start playing. It happened all of a sudden and I.E. will still function correctly on that same file. Click , media player opens , small beuffer and then play/stream.

How to I change it back ? What happened ?

Thanks.

All of a sudden Firefox started downloading media player files instead of simply opening a media player and allowing the files to buffer and start playing like it once did. Used to be you could click on a video link and it would automatically open the appropriate media player and that player would take over from there, basically allowing for a few seconds of buffering and then playing/streaming the video. One day , Firefox started only ever opening the download dialog box and only giving you those options which force you to wait for the entire video to download before it will start playing. It happened all of a sudden and I.E. will still function correctly on that same file. Click , media player opens , small beuffer and then play/stream. How to I change it back ? What happened ? Thanks.

All Replies (2)

more options

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).

  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe mode start window or otherwise make changes.

Try to delete the mimeTypes.rdf file in the Firefox Profile Folder to reset all file actions.

You can use this button to go to the Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder
more options

Well that didn't help but it did get me to find the issue so thanks at least for that.

I had been running VLC and it had a recent update that required an uninstall and reinstall. This apparently left a disconnected (for lack of a better term) plugin in Firefox. Odd thing was that I had even uninstalled and reinstalled Firefox but it still hung on to that VLC plugin. So after correcting that association, all is back to normal.

Yay Me. :)