Opera browser, 256Mb memory and embedded youtube

How much free space do you have on your hard drive?

256k memory is really low for any kind of modern browser/computer. That's likely where you're running into problems. I'd recommend buying more RAM (you can probably find what you need on ebay pretty cheaply, check with your computer's manufacturer to find out what type of RAM you need and how much your computer can take). Even upgrading to 512k would make a big difference.

Also, what's your processor speed? Video is processor-intensive, so if you've got an older computer with a slower processor, that might be another source of your problems.

It sounds like you're having hardware issues more than software issues.

I doubt the graphics card has anything to do with it, if loading is the problem and playing isn't. It sounds more like a connection speed and/or slow computer problem. Have you tried enabling Opera Turbo?

I don't use Opera very much, mostly for hard-to-read pages. Right now my settings are so odd I have no idea what's normal, and Flush is not working at all (and for my part, I don't care lol). In my more often used browsers, Flash is "on demand" -- I have to click on one of the damn things to start it loading. That keeps huge masses of Flashcrap from creating digital logjams.

What sort of security features are you using?

(I'm wondering about your system level security settings not liking i-frames, which is how YouTube and similar videos are embedded on Web pages)

Now there's a thought. Besides which AVG has gotten way too heavy on the resources anyway. You might want to switch to something a little less demanding, like Avira. Or at any rate temporarily turn off some of the Internet protection features of AVG to see if that could be causing the problem.