How can I get my PC to play YouTube videos decently? Please help!!!!?

Specs

CPU: VIA C3 Samuel 2, 796 Mhz, 133 Mhz FSB
MoBo: PCchips M789CG, VIA CLE266 and 8235 chipsets
RAM: Kingston DDR266, 512mb (256x2)
Video: Integrated VGA, 64mb shared memory
HDD: Seagate 40gb, 5400rpm
OS: Windows XP Professional SP2

Now, it works pretty well for most office apps and internet, but when trying to play a video on YouTube, the audio works fine but the video drags a lot and I can't watch it... in general, multimedia tasks or games just don't work well... I've been tweaking configurations a lot but it doesn't seem to work...

I should point out that the CPU came with the MoBo and according to the manual it should be able to play DVDs (theoretically)

So... is there a way to fix this without having to change CPU or MoBo?... and hopefully without adding more RAM?

Could it be related to the HDD read speed?... maybe changing to a 7200rpm HDD could fix it?

Would I really benefit from adding a EVGA FX5200 PCI graphics card with 128mb RAM?

Thanks!

I forgot to tell, I've installed the latest DirectX and Flash

For playing Videos your best choice would be to upgrade the graphics card.

This upgrade should give you a noticeable difference when playing games or video.

My humble advice to you, save your money, don't waste any change on this computer. Save and buy a complete new system.

Remember, a computer is really the sum of its parts, with a system as old as yours no single upgrade will give you much real world difference in performance. Any new parts would be bottlenecked by the older remaining parts in your system.

Good luck

best advice is to get rid of all that garbage and go directly to the Mac store and buy a Mac.

Up grade the graphic card.

upgrade the flash player

i had the same issue, it could be the type of connection you have. when i had dial up i couldnt watch any video. but when i have dsl i can watch with no issue.

Videos online are all through your ISP! This is how fast your internet is! You could have the fastest computer in the world (like mine) but still have a crappy internet connection and videos like Youtube won't load, they well take a while to load and so forth.
Test your speed
http://www.speedtest.net/
let us know what it is!
For games its your Graphic card! Either get something more recent, or see if there are better drivers out there.