Audio / Video Stuttering -- Windows XP

[Mullzy]

One week ago my PC was fine. Today I have an audio/video problem that I can't fix for the life of me.

Background:
I installed GTA: Vice City last Thursday. I noticed it mentioning that it was installing something to do with DirectX -- not directx itself, but something like "Installing DirectX dependancies..." From this point forward I have had constant audio/video problems:

• * In any game I play, if the load gets really heavy on the CPU/Video card my sound and video stutter badly. I.E. while moving into a new area of Vice City or Portland (GTA3) new textures load. I am used to seeing a slight framerate hit during this type of activity, but now the sound of the game stutters BADLY.

• * Any Divx, Xvid, MPEG file I open badly stutters the video for the first 15-60 second depending on the file. The sound seems fine here, but the video stops every second for half a second.

• * While playing MP3's with Winamp I get stutter while doing anything that hits the disk or CPU. I never had this problem before. Occasionally I'd get the odd *pause* in playback, but now I get a definate stutter which is sometimes accompanied by a squeal.

• * When any of the above problems occur, even my mouse stops moving as well. It's as if I have a total system stall for .5 seconds.

Things I've tried without success:

• * I kill Seti@home and my virus scanner (even though they could run before and cause no problems)

• * Installing the newest audio/video/directx drivers (SB Audigy 2, GF4 ti4200, DirectX9.0b)

• * Installing the lastest VIA chipset drivers (I have an old enough board (PIII) that the Microsoft drivers seem to be used for almost everything anyway)

• * Moving my Audigy 2 to all my other PCI Slots. I did notice a couple of the slots caused the same IRQ to be shared between the video and audio cards, but the slot being used when my problems started cause no such conflict

• * Removing the soundcard completely. Games and Video still stutter even without sound drivers of any kind installed

• * Played a little with audio and video codecs (tried changing the priority of some and reinstalling others -- sorry to be so vague)

• * Peformed a system restore to before I started having this problem!!! Is there any type of driver/codec that wouldn't get rolled back by a restore? I couldn't believe it when this one didn't fix my problem

Odd things I've noticed:

• * My video card and 2-4 system drivers (i.e. PCI Bus) are starting the same memory address (port?) Sorry if this is normal, but I hadn't looked at this information before I started having troubles.

I think that's everything I've tried over the last 3-4 days. Any suggestions would be much appreciated. I'm at the point where I'm going to try a fresh install of XP on another disk just to confirm it's not a driver/codec/directx issue.

Thanks in advance!
-Mullzy

 

[nineball9]

You can try checking your DirectX software by running DXDIAG. You may need Window's search facility to find the file (dxdiag.exe) or the shortcut to it.

Good luck!

 

[Mullzy]

I forgot to mention that all DirectX and SB Audigy2 diagnostics check out fine.

Everything is functioning... just not smoothly.

 

[DarkSarkas]

I would suggest reinstalling your video/sound codecs. For divx codecs just hit www.divx.com. Xvid and AC3 codecs are harder to find, but just search around for them and you should be able to locate some. I had a friend with the same problem, and this fixed it pretty easily (when I think about it he played vice city as well...) I never heard him complaining about Vice City not working, so it shouldn't have any other adverse affects on your computer. Good luck! If that doesn't work, try uninstalling vice city and reinstalling directx, see if that makes a different.