Vista - playing videos in vista results in stuttering video

This is only a problem I have in Vista. I have Vista Ultimate.

What happens is that every time I play a video I get this occassional
stutter. These are not shows I'm recording or anything like that from Vista;
these are music videos that are downloaded. I know the problem isn't the
video itself b/c the stutter does not happen in the same spot all the time.

The steps I have taken so far to fix the problem are:
1. I noticed the OS came with a driver for my video card. I found the
driver specific from nVidia and installed it. I have a Leadtek PX6600 GT-TDH
but it's just a modified nVidia card.
2. The OS comes with a default plug-n-play monitor driver. I have a Dell
P793 monitor so I downloaded the most recent drivers from the Dell website.
3. I verified that DMA is turned on for all hard drives.
4. I checked Event Viewer for any hardware failure messages... nothing.
5. Verified disk defragmentation is taking place. Currently scheduled to
run every Wednesday at 1am. I always leave my computer on so it did run.
6. I found that I only experience this problem on a particular hard drive.
When moving these videos to a different hard drive, the stuttering goes away.
7. I verified these videos all play just fine in Windows XP.

My take on the situation is that it's a driver problem. Not sure how else to
diagnose and fix the problem at this point.

The hardware requirements for Vista are a lot higher than for XP... how much
RAM do you have in your PC? What CPU are you running? Was this a clean
install of Vista or an upgrade from another O/S?
--
Cari (MS-MVP)
Windows Technologies - Printing & Imaging
http://www.coribright.com/windows

"Stephen Baker" <StephenBaker@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:1D97E366-15F4-42D5-8ED8-972FBFD05C80@microsoft.com...
> This is only a problem I have in Vista. I have Vista Ultimate.
>
> What happens is that every time I play a video I get this occassional
> stutter. These are not shows I'm recording or anything like that from
> Vista;
> these are music videos that are downloaded. I know the problem isn't the
> video itself b/c the stutter does not happen in the same spot all the
> time.
>
> The steps I have taken so far to fix the problem are:
> 1. I noticed the OS came with a driver for my video card. I found the
> driver specific from nVidia and installed it. I have a Leadtek PX6600
> GT-TDH
> but it's just a modified nVidia card.
> 2. The OS comes with a default plug-n-play monitor driver. I have a Dell
> P793 monitor so I downloaded the most recent drivers from the Dell
> website.
> 3. I verified that DMA is turned on for all hard drives.
> 4. I checked Event Viewer for any hardware failure messages... nothing.
> 5. Verified disk defragmentation is taking place. Currently scheduled to
> run every Wednesday at 1am. I always leave my computer on so it did run.
> 6. I found that I only experience this problem on a particular hard drive.
> When moving these videos to a different hard drive, the stuttering goes
> away.
> 7. I verified these videos all play just fine in Windows XP.
>
> My take on the situation is that it's a driver problem. Not sure how else
> to
> diagnose and fix the problem at this point.

Please take a look at point #6 in my original post. I stated that I only have
this problem when the videos are on a particular hard drive. It's not that I
can never get them to play okay, it's just that I can't get them to play okay
on a particular drive.

The main difference between the drives is that the video plays correctly on
the drive that is a 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE w/ an 8MB cache (IDE)
versus the other drive that is a 200GB Western Digital Caviar SE w/ an 8MB
cache (SATA). The specs on the SATA transfer rate is 150MB/s. Both are
7200RPM.

If anything, I would expect this problem to occur on the IDE drive and not
the SATA drive.

Mobo: Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (64-bit)
Video: Ledtek PX6600 GT-TDH
RAM: 1GB (I think Corsair)
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 (3000)

"Cari (MS-MVP)" wrote:

> The hardware requirements for Vista are a lot higher than for XP... how much
> RAM do you have in your PC? What CPU are you running? Was this a clean
> install of Vista or an upgrade from another O/S?
> --
> Cari (MS-MVP)
> Windows Technologies - Printing & Imaging
> http://www.coribright.com/windows
>
> "Stephen Baker" <StephenBaker@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:1D97E366-15F4-42D5-8ED8-972FBFD05C80@microsoft.com...
> > This is only a problem I have in Vista. I have Vista Ultimate.
> >
> > What happens is that every time I play a video I get this occassional
> > stutter. These are not shows I'm recording or anything like that from
> > Vista;
> > these are music videos that are downloaded. I know the problem isn't the
> > video itself b/c the stutter does not happen in the same spot all the
> > time.
> >
> > The steps I have taken so far to fix the problem are:
> > 1. I noticed the OS came with a driver for my video card. I found the
> > driver specific from nVidia and installed it. I have a Leadtek PX6600
> > GT-TDH
> > but it's just a modified nVidia card.
> > 2. The OS comes with a default plug-n-play monitor driver. I have a Dell
> > P793 monitor so I downloaded the most recent drivers from the Dell
> > website.
> > 3. I verified that DMA is turned on for all hard drives.
> > 4. I checked Event Viewer for any hardware failure messages... nothing.
> > 5. Verified disk defragmentation is taking place. Currently scheduled to
> > run every Wednesday at 1am. I always leave my computer on so it did run.
> > 6. I found that I only experience this problem on a particular hard drive.
> > When moving these videos to a different hard drive, the stuttering goes
> > away.
> > 7. I verified these videos all play just fine in Windows XP.
> >
> > My take on the situation is that it's a driver problem. Not sure how else
> > to
> > diagnose and fix the problem at this point.
>
>