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Stutter - Going insane

post #1 of 11
5/18/05 at 1:54pm
Thread Starter 
I've been struggling with this occasional 0,1s long stutter in DVD and games for a whole year, since i got my laptop.
The only solution that works is setting PowerDVD in real time process priority.
I have a Acer Travelmate 4501WLMi. That's Dothan 1,5GHz, 512ddr, 4200rpm, radeon 9700, WXP SP2.
Could it be the crappy AC97 soundcard? Conexant AC-Link audio, what the fu*k is that anyways, no drivers anywhere to be found? Or the battery? Or chipset i855GM/GME?
My head hurts... :\
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post #2 of 11
5/18/05 at 2:21pm
this happens to me when i set the cpu speed to dynamic switching. try setting it so your cpu runs at full speed all the time. also, try disabling or enabling hardware acceleration in power dvd
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post #3 of 11
5/18/05 at 2:48pm
Thread Starter 
Dynamic/full/battery optimized, all tried out.
It seems to help a little bit if it's at full but that really shouldn't be necessary.
I have also tried hardware acc. on/off, there seems to be no difference.
It's really annoying to sit here, watching a movie and waiting for the freaking stutter.
I'm considering buying an external USB soundcard but I want to be sure before I waste my money.
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post #4 of 11
5/18/05 at 3:11pm
Thread Starter 
I just tried playing counter strike with speedswitch at max performance, LOTS of stutter every 30 seconds or so. It seems to stutter the first time I fire a gun (sound problem?). And then it stutters randomly.
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post #5 of 11
5/18/05 at 3:28pm
if it does it within games too, theres a good chance it could be sound related. have you tried disabling the sound card in the windows device manager to see if it does anything?

for the dvds, you could try an alternate program like windvd or vlc to see if it still does it.

also, try centrino hardware control. it has extra stuff for ati cards
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post #6 of 11
5/18/05 at 3:29pm
This happened with me until I turned off the ram setting in my DVD player. Not sure what its called but it was a radio button that asked how to utilize ram on your machine.

The choices were not at all, low or aggresive. It was on low by default and everything was fine. When I changed it to "Aggresive" (just goes to show you, leave well enough alone ) it started stuttering like crazy, and when I changed it back all was well again.

Now, I know that technically that doesn't make sense, but what can I tell ya. Try it for yourself. You have nothing to lose.

Edit: Oh yeah, this is on WinDVD platinum edition
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post #7 of 11
5/18/05 at 4:17pm
Thread Starter 
I just uninstalled SP2. I've been playing and watching DVD for a few minutes without stutter. But I remember that there has been stutter with SP1 also, just not as frequent as with SP2.
I have tried disabling the soundcard but it doesn't seem to fix the problem. I haven't looked into this thoroughly because it's really boring to watch a DVD without sound, I think you understand.
Why isn't there some sort of diagnostic program that troubleshoots stuttering?

A thought: If i give powerdvd real time process priority it doesn't stutter. So it's somehow CPU based? A driver/process or something that steals CPU power and making everything else halt for the moment?

And yes, I'm already using Centrino hardware control, it rocks! Does it work in Windows 2000? With speedstep and everything? That's still my favourite OS.

Thanks for the help so far.

Edit: After a few minutes it stuttered again. But at least it's better without SP2.
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post #8 of 11
5/18/05 at 5:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bit3
I just uninstalled SP2. I've been playing and watching DVD for a few minutes without stutter. But I remember that there has been stutter with SP1 also, just not as frequent as with SP2.
I have tried disabling the soundcard but it doesn't seem to fix the problem. I haven't looked into this thoroughly because it's really boring to watch a DVD without sound, I think you understand.
Why isn't there some sort of diagnostic program that troubleshoots stuttering?

A thought: If i give powerdvd real time process priority it doesn't stutter. So it's somehow CPU based? A driver/process or something that steals CPU power and making everything else halt for the moment?

And yes, I'm already using Centrino hardware control, it rocks! Does it work in Windows 2000? With speedstep and everything? That's still my favourite OS.

Thanks for the help so far.

Edit: After a few minutes it stuttered again. But at least it's better without SP2.
this is a long shot but have you checked if dma is enabled on the drive?

also, try making an iso of the dvd and mounting it with daemon tools (or similar program) that way, you can see if the drive is causing the problem

to see if anything is hogging the cpu, open up taskmanager and check the cpu usage while youre playing a dvd
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post #9 of 11
5/18/05 at 5:59pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by dr. zoidberg
this is a long shot but have you checked if dma is enabled on the drive?

also, try making an iso of the dvd and mounting it with daemon tools (or similar program) that way, you can see if the drive is causing the problem

to see if anything is hogging the cpu, open up taskmanager and check the cpu usage while youre playing a dvd
DMA is enabled.
I have already tried watching movies from the harddrive, with image and daemon tools.
The CPU usage while watching DVDs stays between 25% and 45%, no peaks at all.
I miss the good old Windows 2000 days
Does intel speedstep with centrino hardware control application work in Windows 2000? I really don't like XP, it feels like a plastic toy.
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post #10 of 11
5/18/05 at 10:10pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by bit3
DMA is enabled.
I have already tried watching movies from the harddrive, with image and daemon tools.
The CPU usage while watching DVDs stays between 25% and 45%, no peaks at all.
I miss the good old Windows 2000 days
Does intel speedstep with centrino hardware control application work in Windows 2000? I really don't like XP, it feels like a plastic toy.
45% !!!!
something else must be wrong. when i set my cpu to 600mhz, the cpu while playing a dvd is around 15% and never above 20%. at 1.7ghz, it stays between 5-8%

you can go back to 2000 if you want, or reinstall xp. CHC should should work as long as you have .net installed. other than that i dont know what else to suggest
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post #11 of 11
5/18/05 at 10:17pm
Thread Starter 
I just started up a game and noticed that the HD activity is quite high. I had 15MB free ram so I shut down some background processes and voila! no more HD activity and no more stutter, now 60MB free ram.
The weird thing is that XP alone is taking like 300MB ram, thats crazy.
I'm formatting and trying out Windows 2000 Pro tomorrow. I think that takes 60MB ram when clean installed.
And no, i will not buy more ram
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