media playback problems

[sime]

Hi all! Hope everyone's well and feeling groovey! I've noticed that since I mentioned a while ago that my machine had been working better than ever, things have started going wrong again!

I have plenty of media players on my machine (windows 7.something, real, quicktime) but all of my videos (mpegs etc) of all types have started to sound dreadful! The picture is fine in terms of quality but both the picture and especially the sound is very stuttery......don't know what has caused this as they all played fine a little while ago. I think I may have changed something to do with settings (well, that's all I can think of!).

I know very little about media stuff at all, so any help would be great.

have a great evening/day/morning!!

Sime.

[fink]

Hi.. What are the specs on your computer...Operating system? CPU?

Do you have a lot of programs running in the background?

You could try backing off on hardware acceleration a bit and see what that does. If you're using win98 it's... start button>settings>control panel>display>settings> click the advanced button>performance tab


Also try reinstalling your sound card driver.

[sime]

Thanks for the tip, I'll try that and see if it helps. It amazes me how much you guys know on this forum! Are you all pros or something? Anyway, thanks once again!

Sime (The slowly-becoming Wiser).

[sime]

Is that as complicated and risky as it sounds?

Thanks!

Sime.

[KMIELKE123]

See this link :

http://www.techspot.com

There is a sound / hardware acceleration guide on the site

[fink]

Which operating system do you use?

It would also be worthwhile to check all the connections for your speakers while you're at it.. that kind of distortion is not usually a symptom of bad cabling but it only takes a moment to look.

[sime]

I've been to the techspot site you gave me the link to. I'm having problems understanding what it wants me to do! it says I should update my sound card drivers, my BIOS and my chipset drivers for my motherboard. I don't know what my soundcard, bios and motherboard are! Well, I know what they are (well, kinda) but I don't know what type they are or how to find out! I don't have a great deal of "paperwork" for this machine as it was an already used, second-hand thing!
I'm starting to feel way over my head now. There were also guides for going through some troubleshooting steps, but most of the things the site talks about - I have no idea what they mean.
I'm losing the plot here!

All I wanna do is play my child's Bob The Builder movies for her! Until about a month or so ago, I didn't have any playback problems...well not as bad as they are now. The sound and picture is so stuttery and seems to have an echo-type feel to it.

Anyone help me?

Sime.

PS...I do know about non-pc audio issues and I'm totally satisfied that my cabling is fine.

PPS...My OS is 98SE, 256 RAM, 13.2 GB free space.

[fink]

Hi... it seems to me that it's more of a system problem than one with the movie players on the computer. Have you installed any programs in the last month?

Do a ctrl+alt+del and tell us the programs that are listed there.

Forget about bios and chipset drivers but I would still try reinstalling the sound driver by going into..

My computer" >control panel> system> device manager tab> scroll down to "sound, video, game controllers" and click on the plus sign and highlight the sound card and click on the remove button. Then reboot. The Computer should Detect new hardware and reinstall it. You may be prompted for the sound card drivers or it may use the drivers on the Windows 98 disk. If you were given a floppy or a CD with the sound card drivers on it you may have to insert it and then browse to the floppy or CD for windows to find them but it's likely that it will do it automatically.

Here's a pic of what device manager looks like...

[sime]

Hello!
This is what is running (apart from this webpage!)

Explorer
Rndal
Stimon
Systray

I have installed some new progs such as sygate firewall and PopupAdzero and a couple of v. small games.

I did the uninstal thing and reinstalled the soundcard but that didn't make any difference.

What should I try next?

Thanks again for your help, much appreciated!

Sime.

[KMIELKE123]

Sime

See this link for a short download - AIDA32. Its a system utility that will give you loads of info on your system - pc components, drivers, etc - with links to relevant websites to get latest updates / drivers etc.

D/L The Zip and then run the .Exe file. It will not harm your system or make any changes to settings - just see the link and look at the screenshots to see what it does.

http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

[fink]

Sime.. do system sounds like startup, shutdown etc distort as well? Have you recently dowloaded any new codecs such as divx?

Also as an experiment try rebooting into safe mode and play a movie.. see if that makes a difference.

To get into safe mode press the F8 key during boot and select safemode from the list of options you're given. If you haven't used safe mode before it's very similar to regular windows just simplified with fewer programs running in the background. To get out of safe mode just reboot normally.

[sime]

Hey! Thanks! I've downloaded aida32 and had a look through some of the stuff it shows. It's all very interesting and I'm sure I'll be spending some time working my way through some of the features. I'll come back and let you know how it goes!

Thanks again.

Sime.

PS. Would upgrading to Windows 2000 help at all? Or should I just stick with 98SE? Or should I just keep quiet??

[sime]

fink

I'll try safe mode and see what happens and post something here (probably on Thursday evening UK). No, the windows sound files all sound fine (not that I use many!).

Thanks!

[sime]

Sorry, forgot to mention...what's a codex divX ? I don't know if I've downloaded any of them! Would I know if I had downloaded any(even with my knowledge!)?

[fink]

The best way to upgrade to win2k is from scratch. You should save any docs, media etc that you want to keep on another drive or partition and then install win2k. You would also have to reinstall any programs as well afterwards but it's worth it by far..2k is a far superior operating system in every respect.


It's best not to do an overlay/upgrade on top of win98 especially if it's not working properly at the moment.

EDIT- a divx codec is a little set of files that you would have had to download to play a movie that said it needed it. If you don't remember then you probably haven't. It goes through a whole install routine and is listed in add/remove progs.