DVD and CD choppiness problems!!

Ok,

I have a Dell XPS M1210 laptop and for some reason, it refuses to cleanly play DVDs or CDs. I searched on this forum for some answers to fix it and I came across THIS THREAD... My problem is EXACTLY like homer007, but my CPU usage stays at around 30% while playing a DVD... He seemed to fix his DVD problem by following the advice:

"have you turned off all of the unnecessary programs in MSCONFIG yet? There should be some way to turn off the nvidia application. I'm trying to find out what exactly it does. I don't think it is necessary software."

How do you know what is unnecessary and how do you turn them off? Apparently he fixed his problem this way...

If anybody else has any other suggestions, please let me know... Like I said, my problem is the exact same as homer007 and has the same symptoms...

 

My first thought is that the IDE interface for the ODD has gone into PIO mode. This usually results from a problem reading a disc and the change is made without the user being informed.

Read this Microsoft KB article. You can then apply the fix described in the workaround.

John

 

Thats what a bunch of articles told me to check for, and it is indeed on DMA and not PIO.

 

Fine, PIO mode is excluded. The XPS M1210 comes in many flavours. What CPU / GPU / RAM do you have. Does the problem occur on both mains and battery power?

John

 

It has the Intel T2500 dual 2.00GHz processor, NVIDIA GeForce 7400 graphics, and 1 GB of RAM... Its kinda distressing that it can't play a DVD.. haha

 

Do you experience same issues even under MediaDirect ? If not, then it is a software issue.

 

Ya, I tried windows media, media direct, and sonic cineplayer with the same results.

 

Good set of hardware, so that can't be the bottleneck. My suspicion starts to move towards the optical drive itself. What brand /model of ODD and have you looked for any firmware updates for it? Does it burn DVDs OK (assuming it is a burner)? And can it play back what it has burnt? You can use DVD Shrink to make a copy of a DVD as a test.

John

 

My question would be have you always had this problem from day one? Did you install or remove programs prior to problem? What is task manager showing in processes running and CPU usage during choppy playback, always 30% no spikes? I forgot to mention it may be easy to just start up in safe mode, if WMP runs, and see what happens. If not, then, as in your first post, turn off non MS programs in MSCONFIG. You will see a check box in the "Services tag" to help you select which ones to un-check or disable for a test. You don't want to hide, just disable.

Good luck...

 

I rebooted in safe mode and it doesnt let me run windows media player. I have a Sony DVD+-RW DW-Q58A drive. When I burn a CD or DVD on the burner, its choppy when I play it on my laptop, but works fine in everything else.

No, I didn't have this problem from day one, it has to be some program(s) that are bogging the process down. It isn't a constant 30%, it tends to be jumpy from 25% to 40% max when playing. When I open the task manager, I have almost 75 processes running, and that seems like WAY too much. I opened MSCONFIG and shut off all non microsoft services other than Norton 360 and it didn't really help. I shut off Norton because I heard it could be a resource hog... that did help a little bit, but not by much.

 

I can't really think of any reason why it would do this, I mean the dual processors should be able to handle it like a champ.

 

I didn't mean the MediDirect player which runs on Windows, I meant the special MediaDirect mode booted with the MediaDirect button (without booting Windows). If you still experience the same sluggish playback then there is a good chance that your optical drive has a fault. Call DELL, if it is a problem with the drive then they will replace it.

Your specifications are more than capable of playing a DVD movie without any trouble at all. It is not a matter of the power/performance of your PC.

 

Right, the mediadirect I tried was the button used without booting windows, I still have the same choppiness.

I'll haveta give Dell a call and see what I can get done.

 

ok... I talked to Dell and I got the "you need to back up your files and format your computer".

It that really necessary? Cause I have 40 Gigs worth of info on here that I really don't have a way of backing up... Any thoughts?

 

You could very well have a bad DVD drive. But now you have to prove it to Dell.
Laptops have a way of losing data so I would really suggest you look for a sale on a 80+ gig external drive and back up your files, only, not the programs.

Unless we or you get luck, you will have to reformat to absolutely rule out a rouge program causing your problem, and in the end it's something you should learn to do. I'ts not hard and Amber, and all, will help you if you go the clean, no 'shovelware" route. I would also suggest you use AntiVir(free) along with Windows Defender not Norton, but lots of opinion on anti virus programs Both these free programs have not let me down for almost 2 years.

70+ processes is not good and you said you thought you saw improvement by turning these off?

 

It kinda seems weird to me that a bad optical drive would be able to burn DVD's flawlessly... but I don't really know that much about optical drives...

I never really "turned off" the processes on the task manager because I havent the foggiest idea as to what should and shouldn't be turned off... I turned off some services on MSCONFIG, but that didn't seem to do much at all...

Ya, I might haveta go the rout of the external drive to back everything up.

I tried VirtualDrive Pro and its making me think that the DVD drive is bad... I made a virtual cd of a DVD and inserted it into the virtual drive and it worked fine. Would you agree that's a good indicater?

I'm half tempted to just buy a new optical drive instead of trying to get Dell to replace it or reformating.

 

Virtual drives have nothing to do with your physical drive. IMHO I would go the B-U external drive because backing up to a stack of DVD's is just so last century with floppy disks. If your hard drive should go, all is lost right? If you couldswap DVD drives with a friend, one screw for Dells, it could get you a quick answer or you could order one from egghead. Then I would suggest the NEC -ND-6650A which is what Dell used in mine, a very good drive.