DVD drive problem? (1 Viewer)

[Neil Joseph]

I have noticed lately that when I play movies on my computer's DVD drive, the movie pauses (starts and stops) a lot. It never used to do this but now it is happening more and more. I am running Win XP if that makes a difference. I can't remember the drive type/model but I can check when I get home. What could the problem be?

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

I have two guesses: 1) the drive is not in DMA mode, and 2) some background task is interrupting.

 

[Neil Joseph]

Where do I go to check to see if it is in DMA mode?

 

[Max Leung]

Open the Control Panel, then go to System->Hardware->Device manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI controller->Primary (or Secondary) IDE Channel->Advanced Settings.

Make sure the Current Transfer Mode is in DMA mode for each device on each IDE channel. If not, try changing it from the Transfer Mode drop-down list above that item.

 

[Neil Joseph]

Both primary and secondary were aet to DMA mode.

 

[Max Leung]

Hmmm, while experimenting with my laptop power saving modes where I can adjust the CPU speed, I find that DVD playback suffers when I set it too low. Stutters and jerkiness happen! (I'm trying to reduce the heat emitted by the laptop by lowering the CPU speed).

Is your machine a Pentium 4 or AMD? Could be that the machine is overheating a bit and causing the P4 to slow down. But, it's probably something running in the background that is causing problems. Have you scanned for viruses or spyware? Ad-aware can kill spyware programs running without your knowledge!

How fast is your machine? What are the specs?

 

[John Parris]

I had a similar problem with a recent box I was playing around with... DMA was on, but I was getting horrendously slow speeds (about 1X...sometimes slower)... DVDs played fine, but copying files from CDs and such was a real slow pain... still can't figure it out :frowning:

 

[Thomas_Jones]

Another possible source of slowdown: If your DVD drive is on the same channel as your hard drive and you have something running in the background.

 

[Neil Joseph]

I will check the connections to see which device(s) are on the same channel as the DVD drive when I get home. As for spyware, I run ad-aware on a fairly regular basis. My processor is an Intel PIII 933MHz, I have 256Mb of RAM and the o.s. is Win XP.

 

[Max Leung]

Another possibility is that your DVD drive is slowly giving up the ghost, taking the performance with it. Of course, the only way to verify this is to find a DVD-ROM that is working fine in another computer and plug it in.

 

[Ted Lee]

john parris -

i also have the same issue as you. i just built a pretty high-end system and when i try to copy from dvd-drive to burner it sometimes just slows wayyy dowm.

all my dma was on, etc.

i finally decided it was faster to burn to my hd first, then back to a cdr.

 

[Neil Joseph]

I copy CD's from my DVD drive to the CD-R drive from time to time and have noticed no degradation.

I checked the connections and decided to use a can of air inside the computer to clean things out. The DVD and CD rom drives share the same bus. I have 2 hard drives on the other bus due to other restrictions I has. I suppose eventually, I could get two replacement cables to put the DVD and HDD 2 on the same bus and the CD rom and HDD 1 on the other bus. I guess I could backup from one HDD to the other HDD quicker that way, correct? I just don't want two demanding devices on the same bus. I will test again after adaware finishes.

 

[Neil Joseph]

It is still currently running choppy. I even tried 16bit desktop rather than 32bit, and downloading the latest video driver. Same crap. I just am glad this is not a HTPC. I may end up getting an updated video card with acceleration down the road. (Not that that will fix this particular issue).

 

[Max Leung]

I assume you're not running any virus checkers?

Another thing you can try: In the Start Menu, select the "Run..." menu item and type in "msconfig". In the General tab, select the "Selective Startup" option, and disable the "Load Startup Items" checkbox. This will prevent windows from loading any apps when you reboot. Try that, and see if it makes the stuttering go away.

If this works, then some application you installed recently is causing the slowdown.

You can even try disabling the services, but that may cause other problems.

 

[Neil Joseph]

I tried disabling NAV but it was the same. I will try what you suggested, hopefully sometime later tonight.

Thanks

 

[Max Leung]

Another thing, is video playback from the hard drive choppy as well? Hopefully you have portions of DVD-Video ripped onto your hard drive. Just want to isolate the problem to your DVD-ROM, and not a problem with the playback software or other system factors.

 

[Neil Joseph]

Max, I ran msconfig & disabled the box as you said. This actually made it run much worse. I enabled it back and it ran better. Still a little choppy.

 

[Max Leung]

Can you list the programs that are run on startup, as listed in msconfig?

 

[Neil Joseph]

You know what, I have determined that only a handful of DVD's have this problem. Today I watched Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and it was smooth. Lately I have been testing it with Atlantis which exhibied problems no matter what I tried. I am thinking that a better graphics card with acceleration can only serve to help my cause in this matter.

 

[Max Leung]

I had slow-down and lip-sync problems when playing DVDs on my laptop, which all disappeared when I closed all the Internet Explorer windows and my programming tools. Yep, I use my laptop for everything.
What kind of graphics card do you have? Is hardware acceleration enabled or disabled with your DVD player software? What version of the graphic card drivers are you running?
I had to downgrade my laptop drivers (I hacked in the latest NVIDIA drivers for my laptop's Geforce 4 Go video card) when I realized that using non-Toshiba graphics drivers caused bad artifacts to appear. Had to go back to the official drivers. Oops.