Mr. Modem: Speeding up video buffering

Sometimes YouTube videos will stop playing, then start, then stop again, over and over. Is this a problem I can fix or something I just have to put up with?

That starting and stopping is called buffering and it can be caused by a number of things, including the speed of your connection (or lack thereof) and the processing horsepower of your computer. A site such as YouTube streams data. In other words, it sends a torrent of data to your computer.

If your connection and/or system cannot accommodate the data as fast as it is arriving, it will accept some of the data, play it, then stop while more data arrives, play that, then stop again, etc., which will drive you crazy in the process.

A free utility called SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube (www.videoaccelerator.com) can help make watching YouTube videos a more pleasant experience. This program pre-buffers videos and caches (saves) the incoming streaming data, thus allowing the video to display in a more fluid manner.

I’m using Windows 8 and have tons of app icons on my Desktop. Is there some way I can organize them, like grouping similar icons together, for example?

Start screen apps are initially displayed in a fairly random order, but if you would prefer a more organized, neat-and-tidy screen, it is easy to arrange them into custom groups. For example, you might drag People, Mail, Messaging and Calendar over to the left-hand side to form a separate People group. Click the ‘minus’ icon in the bottom right corner of the screen to zoom out and you will find that you can drag and drop the new group (or any other groups) anywhere on your screen.

Right-click within the block (while still zoomed out) and you can give the group a name. If you keep your apps segregated into topical groups, it will make it much easier to find a given app when you need it.

Windows 8.1 provides a special Customize mode with much the same functionality. Right-click an empty part of the Start screen, or swipe up, tap Customize, then drag and drop tiles or rename app groups as you wish.

I have an iPhone. Sometimes I inadvertently erase a text message that I received. Are texts saved anywhere? Is there any way of retrieving them?

It isn’t easy, but it can be done. On online search on this topic provides a variety of how-to articles on sites like macworld.co (www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphone/how-retrieve-deleted-text-messages-iphone).

I’ve run into this problem on occasion with my phone and resolved it by not deleting ANY text messages until prompted to do so. In other words, I just never delete any text messages and at a certain point a prompt appears that tells me I have to delete some to make more room. At that point, I start deleting from the oldest texts forward, skipping any that I might want to save.

This story was originally published August 3, 2015 at 1:44 PM with the headline "Mr. Modem: Speeding up video buffering."