Continued Hesitation During Playback

Hello;

This is my first post here. I've done a search for my particular situation and got no match. Also, please excuse any technical ignorance I may display.

As I slowly get the Dell Inspiron 8100 that I inherited from my daughter back up and running, I've discovered a slight "glich" when playing movies. The audio is fine but every so often, throughout the entire movie, the video hesitates or freezes for less that a second then returns to normal. After awhile, this becomes quite annoying, to say the least. There is no problem in running programs, either from CDs or DVDs.

Here's the low down on the hardware and software involved: DVD Player - Toshiba SD-C2502, Firmware version 1D23 12/26/02; Graphics card - nVidia GeForce2 Go 32Mb, driver version 9.1.3.1 6/5/06; DVD Software - Cyberlink PowerDVD 7 Deluxe (recently installed as an update from an OEM version 5.

I've tried out several different DVD software players before deciding on Cyberlink and the hesitation showed up in all of the other programs, some worse than others. In playing around with the video setting in Cyberlink PowerDVD, when I enabled system (nVidia) hardware acceleration, the hesitation got much worse and almost became skipping. When I disabled it, the hesitation became barely noticable but just enough to get to me. I've also unable to locate a more up to date firmware revision for the Toshiba Drive, if there is one, from Dell, Toshiba or anyplace else I've checked.

One other point, if it means anything, the DVD drive would only work sporadically when I got the computer from my daughter. The hard drive was most definitly a goner and when I replaced it, the DVD drive began working again without a hitch, naturally after I bought a "new" (non OEM) one on eBay).

I haven't posed this problem to Cyberlink because in order to get email suppport or get access to the forums you have to register the software and in doing so, play 30 questions.

Any solutions, advice or direction will be most appreciated.

Gerry

 

It possibly jumped into PIO mode somehow. In the device manager, set it to DMA "on", if it's off, and reboot. This will happen sometimes, when installing new software, connected with dvd drives.

If that doesn't work, in the device manager, find the dvd drive in the list of devices, right click on it, and click on uninstall. After it uninstalls, reboot and let windows detect new hardware and install driver for you. This fixes a lot of problems, but may or may not fix this problem.

This works with Windows '98 and XP. Not sure about Windows ME. You didn't mention which OS you have.
Good luck! Let us know how it goes? )

I looked around at a firmware site, and found this thread, about your drive. A different firmware version was mentioned. I don't know if it's an older one or not. Here's the link, so you can read it, and look around there for firmware:
http://forum.rpc1.org/viewtopic.php?t=37798&highlight=C2502

 

JVC;

Thanks for the quick reply. I'm running Windows XP SR2 and it's all up to date, considering it was a fresh install on the new HD I put in.

The DMA is "on". The only other point I forgot was that the driver for the DVD driver is dated 7/1/01 v5.1.2535.0. I'm not sure updating the driver, if I could find one, would solve the problem.

I did put a post on the Firmware site.

This is how it's been since I got this computer; one small nagging little problem after another. With the exception of the new 60Gb harddrive, so far all fixes I've been able to accomplish for relatively little money (thanks to eBay).

Gerry

 

Only other thing I can think of, is maybe the graphics card. You said:

 

I have had the symptoms described with a few BACKUPS and different Dvd players. My originals played fine on the players.

The problem seemed to be caused by the burn speed of my backup. Only when I redid from the original and lowered my burn speed to 4X (8X media) was the problem resolved.

Another solution....the laser might need cleaning? I have no idea if this would be difficult or not, as it is a notebook.

 

Well, I think I can rule out the DVD player as being the cause. I was watching my 3D Aquarium Screensaver and noticed the same slight hesitation every so often as with the DVD movies.

Regarding the graphics card. From what I gleaned on the Dell video update forum, it appears the maximum video ram this system can handle is 64MB or at least that's the maximum that the cards designed for this motherboard all have. The suggested best upgrades are 1) Quadro4 700Go GL 64MB (very expensive, even on eBay); 2)nVidia GeForce4 4200 GO 64MB (which apparently is very similar to the Quadro); ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 M9 64MB; and nVidia GeForce4 440GO 64MB. I was planning on doing this updgrade eventually.

I was wondering if it could be the nVidia Driver I'm using. I got if off of LapTopVideo2Go.com and they build in an override so that any nVidia card can use the most up to date drivers, which you cannot do if you download them from nVidia for an OEM graphics card. If I recall correctly, the most recent driver offered by Dell is from 2002, though Windows has a High Priority Update from 2003. I'll probably check in on their forum now that I'm fairly sure it's not the DVD player. I just may be that I am asking too much from the card I have.

Hopefully this may open up some other thoughts or help someone else in my situation.