Being one of the best and largest subscription-based streaming services around for almost over a decade, Hulu has got itself a fandom of over 30 million binge-watchers around the globe. But just like anything else, there happen glitches with this service as well making it cease to work on your laptop, TV, smartphone, etc., without any notice.

Why Isn’t Hulu Working On My Laptop?

Hulu, because it’s an online service, has a few preliminary requirements to work well on your device. For example, fast and stable internet connection, errorless browser or app, enough resources, etc. So if Hulu is crashing, stuttering, or just entirely not working on your laptop, some of the possible causes may be:

1. Your home network’s bandwidth issues i.e. poor internet connection
2. Issues with the Hulu app on your laptop i.e. the app might be outdated, a file inside might be corrupted, or there may be some other soft bug
3. Maybe there is an issue with your account, and a fresh re-login required
4. Lots of background stuff not letting Hulu procure enough system resources to run smooth
5. Or there might be a countrywide Hulu service outage due to some technical faults

How to Fix Hulu Not Working?

Now as we have checked why does Hulu stops working most of the time, let’s go over the troubleshooting tricks and learn how to bring it back to life again.

Try these basic troubleshoots first:

1. Make sure Hulu servers are not down and there is no service outage on the macro level. Either do a simple search (i.e. “is Hulu down”) on your web browser or try utilizing online platforms/facilities such as “Downdetector”, etc. to know about any possible Hulu service letdowns. If everything shows up fine, proceed down to other fixes.
2. If you are using the Hulu app on your laptop, make sure it’s up-to-date. You can check that out on the store app you do the downloads from, from inside the Library therein – to be precise.
3. If you love watching streams and enjoy the platform online on a web browser, try clearing all your browser junk i.e. caches, history, cookies, etc. You can do that by utilizing the three vertical/horizontal (menu) dots on the top right corner of your browser’s window.
4. As far as Hulu app users are concerned, they can also try the application cache’ cleanup trick on their device and pretty much find a way out as well.
5. Check out if there is an issue with your internet connection. Try restarting your router or modem, test the internet speeds (if required, disconnect other devices temporarily from your home network and declutter it to improve speeds), and I suggest restarting the laptop as well even. See if that works. If not, try switching from the wireless connection to wired and experiment using an Ethernet cable instead.

To give you a rough idea, Hulu recommends at least 3Mbps internet speed for watching its library content, 8Mbps for live streams, and at least 16Mbps for 4K content.

6. Verify if the date, time, and time zone settings on your laptop are correct. Make sure they are!
7. Make sure you’ve got no pending system updates. You can check for available OS updates in your Settings menu > Update & Security. Whereas, for such streaming-services-related issues, you may need to check out your graphics drivers for updates as well.
8. Refresh your Hulu account by signing out and signing back in from scratch. Also, if you’re using the Hulu app, perform a hard refresh on it as well. For that, fully terminate the app on your laptop, preferably disengage your streaming device as well, and then start all over again.

Advanced Troubleshoot Tips and Tricks

If nothing seems to work for you, try running Hulu on some other device i.e. your smartphone, TV, firestick, etc. If it’s working fine on another device but not on your laptop only, try the advanced fixes given below.

1. See if there is too much consumption in the background and if the OS is failing to evenly distribute the system resources to all the running processes. Go to Task Manager (press Ctrl + Shift + Esc all three keys at once) and terminate all the messy and hungriest processes therein.
2. Utilize the Windows inbuilt app reset facility and perform Hulu app reset from the main Settings menu > Apps > Hulu (tap on advanced options) > Reset.
3. Try running the built-in Windows Store Apps Troubleshooter and see if that fixes the issue for you.
4. Perform a complete DNS cache cleanup on your device. Also, try tweaking the DNS server address.
5. In most cases, you may also effectively fix all such streaming-services-related bugs and glitches by turning off DRM playback protection from within your Hulu app. The next thing related to this is to clean out all the existing Microsoft PlayReady files from your C: drive as well.
6. Understand Hulu error codes to do the troubleshoot like a pro. For example, runnuck 13, 5003, 400, 500, p-dev 320, HDCP, etc. are the most commonly encountered Hulu errors representing buffering, playback, account issues, server defects, media player bugs, and related issues, respectively.
7. You may also try temporarily turning off your Windows Defender Firewall from your device’s control panel to see if that’s causing the whole mess. If yes, Hulu should start working well after you turn that off.

If you’ve any confusion regarding any of these 15 (basic + advanced) repair tricks, for example, how these fixes work, what and how exactly to do a certain troubleshoot of them, etc., you can refer to my another post regarding Netflix(why is Netflix not working…) and comprehensively learn each one of these fixes.

Ending Note

Finally, if after all these more than a dozen troubleshooting methods you still find yourself struggling to find the answer “why isn’t Hulu working on my laptop?”, try completely uninstalling and then reinstalling the app.

If that seems to work for you and Hulu starts working normally, great, otherwise, I’d suggest switching to some other streaming service i.e. Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime Video, etc. I hope, and I wish you make it to the luck.