Baffling problem playing DVDs in WMP 11 on XP

Topic

New Reply

Hi,

I am trying to play any pre-recorded DVD on an Acer laptop running XP SP3 with the latest Windows Media Player 11 plus the latest codec pack installed.

The effect I am getting is whenever I play a DVD the sounds breaks up and crackles and the picture start juddering – from previous experience this is codec problem. The same effect happens when I try playing the DVD under VLC, KLite MPClassic or WinDVD 2010 Trial version on the laptop. The DVDs are fine on another PC or a DVD player.
If I play music or a Divx AVI file on this laptop the sound is perfect.

Now here’s an odd thing. If I play an AVI in VLC on its own its fine. If I then play a DVD with WMP it starts crackling. If I then start an AVI in VLC with the WMP window behind it, the sound on the AVI cracks up. If I pause the WMP DVD session the sound on the AVI file clears up. When I kill the WMP DVD session, the AVI continues to play fine.
So if a DVD is playing, it affects all other programs playing sound. Also all the DVD players must share the same codecs which I assume is/are in error, despite being fresh installations of the latest versions.

The laptop has one careful lady owner (!), was rebuilt with XP 6 months ago and is clean of viruses and up to date with patches etc.

Can anyone explain what’s going on before I resort to rebuilding it again?

Thanks,
DK

Reply | Quote

Replies

You can try to reinstall the DVD codec, if I’m not mistaken there is no native support for DVD in XP, and
consequently, a 3rd party addon DVD codec is needed. The DVD codec may have become corrupt and/or “misbehaving”.

VLC has it’s own divx and xvid codecs, so AVI’s should be fine, as you mentioned.

It could also be codecs conflicting with one another as well. Favor installing straight individual codecs as opposed to “codec Packs”
Example; AC3 Filter 1.63b, Xvid 1.2.2 released, and DivX codec v 8.0 (latest)

I also noticed that you mention a “trial version” of WinDVD 2010, check to see that it hasn’t expired.

Reply | Quote

Thanks for the feedback Clint.

I think you’re right – I’ll un-install all media/DVD players and codecs, then start with the latest WMP and see if I can just get the WMP DVD codecs, and see what happens.

Cheers
DK

Reply | Quote

What sounds more likely to me is that your DVD drive has slipped out of DMA mode and into PIO mode. Its a constant stuttering effect and its caused because PIO mode is slow and a DVD drive will be demoted to PIO mode sometimes when there is an event where Windows had a problem communicating with the drive so it stepped it down.

You can find out if its in PIO mode by going to the device manager and determine what controller channel its connected to and in the properties>advanced settings it will indicate the current transfer mode. If its PIO, that’s your problem and you can google possible solutions to getting it set back to DMA mode if its not readilly available in the dropdown.

Reply | Quote