The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    CD/DVD Chopiness Problems

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by awesomo, Aug 22, 2007.

  1. awesomo

    awesomo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi all,

    I know that there are already two threads with the same problem, but I did everything and the problem still didn't go away. Whenever I try to play any movies or cds from the dvd-rw drive, they come out choppy; I have tried running multiple programs such as Itunes, media player, winamp, vlc, powerdvd and the only time I don't have chopiness problems is when I use mediadirect. I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 running windows xp media center edition with a T2050 Core Duo (not core 2 duo) and 1Gb of RAM and the infamous Sony DW-Q38A dvd-rw drive. When I'm idle I only use 1% of the CPU, but when watching a dvd the CPU usage jumps from 40%-60%. There are about 50 processes running using about 560MB of RAM when Idling.
    Any help is appreciated
     
    awesomo, Aug 22, 2007
    #1
  2. vespoli

    vespoli 402 NBR Reviewer

    Reputations:
    1,134
    Messages:
    3,401
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Have you enabled DMA mode? Sometimes PIO vs. DMA mode can cause problems.
     
    vespoli, Aug 22, 2007
    #2
  3. awesomo

    awesomo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Oh, sorry I forgot to put that, but Yes I have enabled DMA mode
     
    awesomo, Aug 22, 2007
    #3
  4. DTM

    DTM Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    11
    Messages:
    79
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    What video card do you have?
     
    DTM, Aug 22, 2007
    #4
  5. awesomo

    awesomo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have the ati mobility radeon x1400, but the problem also occurs with music cds
     
    awesomo, Aug 22, 2007
    #5
  6. DTM

    DTM Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    11
    Messages:
    79
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    That rules out hardware for the most part. Seems software is corrupt. Try reinstalling your dvd driver:

    Go to control panel, system, device manager tab, and click on your dvd drive, then remove it. Windows will reinstall it on the reboot.

    Edit: It could also be a conflict between players, see if there's any updates or disable/uninstall the ones you don't use that much. You can always put them back.
     
    DTM, Aug 22, 2007
    #6
  7. awesomo

    awesomo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I reinstalled the dvd driver using the method you proposed, and I uninstalled the media players I dont use, but the problem is still there. Now the only media players I have are Media Player 11, Newest Itunes, and Power DVD (no clue what version); I need Itunes for my ipod and power DVD for media center, but I can live without WMP, Can I uninstall it, but more importantly should I?
     
    awesomo, Aug 22, 2007
    #7
  8. DTM

    DTM Notebook Geek

    Reputations:
    11
    Messages:
    79
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    15
    No need to uninstall anything else. A firmware update if available could help, but usually there for a specific fix, but you could check.

    Sorry, I'm out of proposals right now and will post back if something changes, however you did say it works with media direct. Maybe someone else will help. :cool:
     
    DTM, Aug 22, 2007
    #8
  9. PhoenixFx

    PhoenixFx Notebook Virtuoso

    Reputations:
    744
    Messages:
    3,083
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    105
    Sounds to me lot like a DMA problem, even if you already have it enabled, uninstall the secondary IDE channel and refresh (just to make sure).
     
    PhoenixFx, Aug 22, 2007
    #9
  10. awesomo

    awesomo Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    5
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hey PhoenixFx,
    You are a freggin genius, you helped me find the problem, but DTM was on the right track. The problem ended up being that PIO Mode was in fact enabled, and I had been checking the primary drive to see if DMA was on. Thank you for all your help
     
    awesomo, Aug 23, 2007
    #10