Vista Media Center, Media pauses randomly...

teknomedic

Power User
I've been trying to track down why this happens for a awhile now...

I have my "main" Vista x64 PC that has all my media. I then have a Vista x32 PC that's hooked up to my TV and I use Vista Media Center on that one to access all my shared media on from the x64 PC. This is all done over my wireless "G" network. The router and x32 Vista MCE are only about 20ft away from each other and signal strength is maxed out all the time.

When I'm watching videos, VistaMCE with pause randomly.... the picture will freeze and the sound will stop. This lasts from one second to 15 seconds or more... when it kicks back in... the sound will pick up where it left off, but the video will "fast forward" until it reaches the point it should have been at had it not paused... the video then goes slow-motion until the audio catches up again. This is very annoying.

VistaMCE menus also do this.... the menus will pause and if I keep pressing buttons when the menus start working again all the button presses will be used in fast forward.

I can fix this by reformatting my VistaMCE x32 PC and reinstalling... but the fix only lasts for about a week before it starts up again. I've tried reformatting my main X64 PC before and this doesn't fix the problem at all... and I've also tried changing wireless channels and done other network troubleshooting and everything points to the VistaMCE PC having the issues.

It almost seems like a cache issue, as if the PC caches a small amount of data... plays it (video, MCE Menus, etc) and then has to pause and full cache again before continuing. I had WinXP MCE setup on this PC before and didn't have this problem. Is there a way to fix VistaMCE to use network resources better... or increase it's cache so that it works better?

Any thoughts on this?... anyone else having this issue?

Here are the specs on the VistaMCE PC:
-Vista Ultimate 32 (all updates)
-AMD64 3800+
-1GB RAM
-ATI 9800 Pro AGP (128MB)
-Gigabyte GA-K8U-939
-400GB IDE HDD

TK.
 
Last edited:

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    Intel C2D e8400
    Motherboard
    EVGA nForce 780i SLI FTW
    Memory
    4GB Corsair DDR2 4-4-4-12 800mhz
    Graphics Card(s)
    XFX nVidia 9800GTX+ (w/ XFX 8600GT for PhysX)
    Sound Card
    Creative SB X-Fi XtremeGamer
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Hanns-G 22" WS LCD
    PSU
    Antec TruPower 650w
    Other Info
    Haven't OC'd anything.... yet.
    (Laptop is a Gateway 6860FX... awesome bang for buck)
it sounds like the usual graphics driver bug - I get random slow downs where the frame rate drops and the sound stutters so it sounds like a similar problem. I would try updating your drivers.
 

My Computer

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