I'm totally stumped and not sure where to go for help, so I thought I'd try posting this on here.

The YouTube site just does not work on my PC, it loads very slowly and seems to stop half-way through. If I try to watch a video it claims I don't have Flash installed.

None of the usual explanations work though:

-The YouTube site isn't down, I can access it fully on my N800.

-It can't be the connection at fault because my PC and tablets use the same connection, and my PC works fine loading all other sites.

-It can't be Flash because my PC can still play YouTube videos embedded on other sites.

-It can't be the browser because I get exactly the same problems on Firefox and IE.

-I've tried emptying cookies but it doesn't help.

Why would my PC decide to mess up the YouTube site but not embedded YouTube videos on other sites?

I had precisely the same issue the other day. I can't remember how I fixed it, though. I think I may have just rebooted, but my guess is that you tried that already..

Yeah, I tried rebooting, didn't help at all.

Now it's started working without me doing anything, but I have a feeling it'll come back again as it's done this before.

Ordinarily I'd just blame the site, but it can't be because it worked fine on the tablet.

I just can't think what could be causing it, no explanation fits.

...Gremlins?

Are you blocking adds on one platform, but not the other, or blocking ads in different ways? Are you running any extensions, add-on tool bars, etc. in your PC browser?

I don't think it can be anything like that, because the problem just comes and goes without me doing anything.

And I'm not even using any ad-blockers or tool bars in FF or IE.

Ah, life is too short to worry about this kind of thing, but it's just so weird. Gremlins do indeed sound the most likely explanation.

Possibly your blocking the .flv file on your pc webbrowser. Also this prolly won't help since you got it working on other sites embedded, double your browser cache if you have space.

It wasn't just blocking the video, the entire site loaded incorrectly, it was formatted weirdly with images missing and all kinds of other stuff.

YouTube works correctly today though, and they seem to have altered their formatting quite a lot. Perhaps the process of switching over to the new format was the cause of these problems? But if that's the case, why didn't it affect viewing the site through the tablet at all?

antiGremlins.

Ah yeah, I'd forgotten about those...