Vista - Jerky DVD Playback under Vista Home Basic - Dell Inspiron 1150

Hi,

I hope you can help. I have a Dell Inspiron 1150, which has an AMD
Turion 64 Processor and 1GB Ram, running Windows Vista Home Basic. The
machine is about 1 month old and has all the latest patches appleid
via windows update.

When I playback DVDs using WinDVD that shipped with the laptop, the
playback is intermittantly frozen, whilst the sounds often continues.
Often, after a few seconds, the video catches up by playing the
missing video in a sort of high speed, fast-forward mode, until the
video and sound catch up. At times, even the sound freezes, and the PC
struggles to respond to mouse clicks like the processor is being
hammered. The interruptions occur about every 20-30 seconds.

I have also installed BBC iPlayer (had to do a little registry hack to
get it to play before you ask about Vista support, but it seems okay -
DVD skipped prior to iPlayer install), and this has exactly the same
problem.

I have tried to improve it by turning off wireless networking, Anti-
virus (AVG Free), Windows Defender etc, it still doesn't improve. I
don't have much other software installed.

I have also installed the latest Video Drivers for the ATI card that
is installed.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

Phil

Hi

This could be due to Missing or Outdated DVD (MPEG 2) Video Codec,

I recommend you to use VLC player! Free and works fine, no codec needed to
install

Download VLC Player here www.videolan.org/vlc/download-windows.html

Thanks

Abi

<phil@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1193053698.596148.176830@xxxxxx

This problem can occur if the Optical drive's operating mode has been
changed due to repeated errors. Normally, an Optical drive will run at
or above UDMA Mode 2. If the "Step-Back" operating mode to avoid
errors has occurred the mode may now be in a slower PIO mode. To
resolve this you sometimes have to remove the ATAPI/IDE controller
that hosts the optical and then allow Windows to re-detect it and the
Optical drive. Most recent controllers have an Advanced (TAB) in the
details box of the device that shows connected device's operating mode.

<phil@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1193053698.596148.176830@xxxxxx

* phil@xxxxxx:Have you installed all updates? Especially, these two?

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938194
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941649

Also, you could trying using the free GOM Player and
see how it does. http://www.gomplayer.com/main.html

R. McCarty's reply is good information, too.


-Michael

MICHAEL wrote:
Have we turned of indexing - in the hard drive properties there is a
checkbox, try unchecking that and see if it helps. You might also turn
of indexing via that the "Search" properties but the drive issue was one
huge problem for me.

Does the HDD light keep flashing? If it's on the same Bus as the DVD,
and I don't know the answer to that but "If" then that will disrupt
reading of the DVD

Thanks guys, all sorted now. I followed your instructions on hard
drive indexing and also downloaded a new player!

Thanks