Media playback stuttering

Karl

Karl

Karl

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When using VLC and to an even greater extent, Windows Media Player, my media files have started stuttering during playback. The sound is effected more than the video, and it's happening with everything from AVI files to MP3 files.

The machine I'm running these files on is a Sony VAIO VGN-FS215S. I've upgraded the RAM from 512mb to 1gig, not because of this, but it's made no difference and it's worth noting. Other specs are:

Intel Pentium M 1.86ghz, 782mhz (This is what it says in the properties, I assume the second value is something to do with the bus).

It's also worth noting that this system was perfectly capable of playing back whatever I wanted it to until I installed Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition.

Since then, startup's taken longer and this playback problem's come into effect.

I've left it on for ages to try and see if compiling .NET libraries was what was causing the problem, but those processes have since been dumped and the problem still exists.

VLC media player spikes slightly during playback, but nothing more than about 16% of the CPU and the idle process is taking up the rest of it. There's moderate HDD activity, but nothing more than usual. I defragmented the drives that showed any fragmentation last night, but again it's made no difference.

Any thoughts on what I can do? I tend to use this laptop mainly for media playback, and would appreciate some thoughts on how to sort it out!

Thanks in advance,

Karl.
 
Update: I'm also experiencing problems with the mouse pointer stuttering too. The whole system feels like it's working on 100% CPU load when in reality very little is happening.

I just closed uTorrent which has resulted in the mouse problems disappearing, but uTorrent has never taken up any resource to speak of. The media playback problem still exists.

This wouldn't be irritating me if I thought that the laptop wasn't capable of media playback, but it's been fine for years! Why's it struggling just as soon as I install an application?!

I've also noticed that I'm getting a fair amount of HDD activity even when I'm not playing files. In fact, nothing's happening in the process list to speak of, yet HDD usage is a fairly steading blinking light on my laptop.

Edit again! I waited for the HDD light to stop blinking and tried again. Same problem with media playback. It sounds like slow motion at one point because my PC's having so many problems dealing with it!

I'm using two partitions on the same hard disk, and playing media files on both partitions even after I've closed *all* closable processes still causes skipping and freezing.

I've also tried the VAIO website to see whether there are any new audio drivers I can try, and the same ones I've had for ages are the current ones.

Short of a format, what can I do?!

I'm totally stuck!
 
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update number two. it's even happening on youtube links. Things that shouldn't even require enough HDD time to wipe a bogey are causing it to stutter. :(
 
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system properties lists the processor as Pentium M 1.86 (782MHz) because it's a 1.86GHz processor, which has been slowed down by lowering the multiplier to conserve battery, as the processor isn't doing very much.

As you say that the HDD light is going mad - open task manager, go to the processes tab and add extra columns (view menu): i/o read i/o write and i/o other. Sort by these three columns and take a note of what the top processes are. This will tell you what process is causing the problem.
 
Thanks for the preliminary advice =walls=. :)

Top I/O Writes are:
Firefox.exe - 17,000 - Not had it open that long, so not suprising.
lsass.exe - 6,796 - local security authentication service? Not sure if it should be that high or not!
system - 5,000

Top I/O Reads are:
csrss.exe - 180,000! Wow!
firefox.exe - 69,000 - again, not suprising.
utorrent.exe - 32,000 - Had it open a few hours, and it's never caused problems in the past.

Top I/O Others are:
explorer.exe - 520,000
svchost.exe - 136,000
utorrent.exe - 114,500

So what does this mean?

I'd expect firefox to be up there, same goes for utorrent and explorer. Should I expect to see higher values than that for a rogue process, or should I look farther down the list?

Also, since I've tried opening YouTube links when my HDD is hardly ever coming on and it's still happening, I'd imagine that it's probably not the HDD access anyway as such.

Nothing's standing out in my processes list (which I cleared earlier to test, same problem), or my bootup scripts which is strange considering that windows is now taking 3 times the usual time to bootup.

Thanks,

Karl.
 
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kk - doesn't look to be a rogue process that's doing it...none of those are particularly high (although the explorer process is generating a lot of i/o other).

i/o read and write are pretty much exactly what they sound like, whereas i/o other is when a process generates an i/o operation which is neither read nor write. This could include file, network or device i/o operations...

Has anything been changed (system wise) on the laptop recently? perhaps drivers for something or maybe a new codec pack?
 
Not really any drivers, but I've installed the .NET 2.0 framework and Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition which has in turn incurred windows updates. However, nothing that's running in the process table, and nothing codec wise that'd cause the speakers to fall over. :confused:
 
did you take a note of what updates were installed, or go for "express install"?

It might be worth a google for the patch numbers to see if there are any known issues or uninstall the updates one by one - as not everything microsoft sends out is entirely stable :rolleyes:
 
Will do tonight, and I'll update you to let you know. If necessary, I'll uninstall everything I've installed. :)
 
This sort of thing has happened to loads of windows installs, only the other week it happened to my install and someone elses for no reason.
 
I have now completely uninstalled everything that I had installed upon experiencing this problem. My config is as it was, and I'm still suffering the same problem!

Short of a format, are there any thoughts as to what else I can do?

Edit: I've also removed NOD32. The problem still exists.
 
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Well I can't confirm it BUT , a few of us in our It department have the same issue and all have NOD32 installed so I think they must be some connection there somewhere , I was think the reatime file scanner , but if you have uninstalled that then I assume that rules it out , unless you want to do a full reinstall and test it..............
 
Back!

Okay, a full re-install has fixed the problem, and I've re-installed NOD32 without any problems.

I had also been running the last install on this laptop for around two years, maybe a little more and with no problems. However, the determining factor appears to have been my install of the .NET 2.0 framework + Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition + updates to those particular applications. I can't be any more specific just yet, but I'll keep you up to date as I find out. Just about to install the .NET framework and updates on their own.
 
Okay, I've re-installed Windows a few more times with some determining installs. The long and short of it is:

Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition's install disc is causing the problem.

I've installed the .NET 2.0 framework (redistributable package) without any problems, and all subsequent windows security updates.

I installed Team Edition, and about 5 minutes into it, I found the DVD wasn't working too well, so I rolled back the install. The problem still made it onto my laptop despite the entire process being rolled back.

Here's what I've done to fix the problem.

I've done a re-install (unfortunately), and instead of installing Team Edition, I've installed the free Visual Web Developer. I've installed the .NET 2.0 framework (redistributable package), NOD32, and the AJAX extensions for .NET. The product is a fully working laptop without sound problems that I'm still able to develop on.

The down-side is that I can't tell you what part of Team Edition causes the problem due to the rollback still not fixing it.

If you guys have any other questions relating to the problem, throw 'em at me and I'll try to answer them. :)
 
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