Major streaming problems with 8.1

I bought a mini-computer (Pipo X7) to use for streaming but am having major problems. It starts out okay but after a short time the video becomes choppy and then gets progressively worse. It starts briefly freezing every few frames and the longer it goes the longer the freezes last. After a half-hour or so they can last for many seconds, even a half-minute or so. Eventually the entire computer slows to a crawl and it can take many minutes before there is even any response to a mouse click.

I have been tearing my hair out over this and am no closer to a solution but I have seen many complaints similar to mine on other forums and they all seem to have to do with Windows 8.1. Since I still cannot determine if my problem is hardware-related or Windows-related, my question is if anyone here can shed more light on this. Is this kind of problem likely to be due to the OS? Is there anything I can do to improve it?

I have already done the obvious things like disabling all automatic updates and I have also tried streaming the same video under identical conditions with my desktop running Windows 7, and that works perfectly so I don’t think it can be related to my Internet connection. Any insights into this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Hi rikki, I'm not familiar with Pipo x7 but doing a 'Google' I see it has W8.1 as an OS with 'Bing'. Does it have an Anti-virus in use or how is it protected from 'infection'? Neil.

 

Hi Neil, it comes with Defender and Windows firewall. I have disabled Defender monitoring protection and automatic updates and do it all manually instead.

 

Do you not suspect some interference from outside sources?
Anything being streamed from the Internet will need an AV actively protecting it's content. Neil.

 

I am trying to diagnose a problem Neil. Defender is known for sometimes degrading Internet traffic when it shouldn't. Temporarily disabling it is one of way of eliminating it as a culprit.

 

Have you tried updating the Drivers for the Pipo? Neil.

 

There are no specific updates available for it that I can find. The computer itself says it is up to date. There are more recent driver files on the website, but they are in Chinese and I have not been able to figure out how to download them. However, I did install all the Windows updates I could find, including drivers, and disabled some non-essential services and the Pipo appears to be working better now. I managed to stream a film last night for the first time without any problems. I am not marking this as resolved yet because I need to make sure the problem actually is solved, but if it still seems okay in a few days I will consider it fixed.

 

Since installing all Windows updates and disabling everything I can find that might degrade performance by running in the background, streaming seems to be working normally. I now consider this problem solved.