The Linear Canvas

One of the problems I have always had with video sites like YouTube has been that the videos occasionally stop and start over and over again in Windows. If I am watching an interesting video, that can be especially annoying.

The issue is that, usually, the video’s speed is being throttled by Windows itself. I am not sure how that is supposed to help anything, except on a business network, but it is fairly easy to fix by editing the Windows registry.

(I have never ruined my Windows registry by editing it. Especially if done correctly, nothing will go wrong. I don’t back it up before I do any editing either. I run a separate backup program and there’s always Windows System Restore. Still if you are afraid that you will screw something up. find someone more capable to make this change for you)

Here’s how to do it:

Press <Windows key> R

In the Open: text box, type regedit then press <enter>

In the left pane navigate to:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows NT \ CurrentVersion \ Multimedia \ SystemProfile

In the right pane double-click NetworkThrottlingIndex, which causes a dialog box to appear. In the box, you can raise or lower the value data to change the throttling effect. Change the base to decimal and you will see the default is 10. Change the decimal value to 70. Press the OK button and then close RegEdit.

Hexadecimal default is a and the recommended value is 46. I think decimal just gives you a clearer understanding of the percentage of data throttling by Windows.

My assumption is this value could be from 0 to 100. Zero would obviously be complete throttling and 100 is no throttling at all. Microsoft recommends that this not be set over 70, but experimenting shouldn’t cause any real harm. Just change it back if it doesn’t work for you. I changed my throttling to 70 and am satisfied with the performance, so far.