Elements 14 pauses every second

[farrelldawn]

This is a commonly posted issue, but I have tried many of the things listed in other posts and no luck so far.  When I try to play an mp4 video from a video camera in Elements, it will play from a split second to maybe 1-2 seconds and then pause again.  Strangely, it worked fine for the first 15 minutes or so of it being newly installed on this computer, but now every time it only runs for a split second.  

HP Pavilion

Intel core i5-8400T CPU, 1.70GHz, 6 cores

12 GB RAM

Intel UHD graphics 630

I watched Task Manager while trying to play the video as was suggested, but it doesn't appear that anything else is hugely impacting CPU or memory use.  Turned internet and antivirus off, no difference.  

I don't have the option in preferences - audio hardware to choose no device, which seems to have worked for many people. 

I run the program on my home computer no problem, which is older and I'm quite sure is less powerful.  

There's no orange bar at the top when I import the video that would indicate a settings mismatch. 

Any ideas where to start?

[Steve Grisetti]

It depends. When you say your playback is pausing every second do you mean it pauses then starts then pauses then starts, or do you mean you try to play it and it stops until you start playback again? Your processor is plenty powerful so that's not likely the issue.

Most likely you have some background process interrupting or possibly some malware at work. I assume you've run Malware Bytes. If you haven't, you should. I also assume you're running Windows 10 with all the latest updates and that you've tried rebooting.