Horrible DVD playback

[Rockinacoustic]

Basically, whenever I try to play a dvd on my desktop, the playback is very choppy, both visual and audio most of the time. At first i suspected my codecs were corrupt, so I installed powerdvd 6 deluxe edition, and i even tried ffdshow to see if it would solve my playback issue. None of that worked, so then i suspected by Drive was bad (yes, it has the latest firmware/drivers). I swapped in an old Sony cd/dvd drive (didn't install the drivers, as it was detected automatically by win XP, i know this wasn't the best troubleshooting method). Unfortunately that didn't help either

Today, i gave it one last shot, and i ripped and encoded a dvd to my hardrive, and what do you know, perfect playback. I'm coming to the conclusion my drive is shot, but I'd like some second opinions before I spend some $. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.

 

[The Boston Dangler]

make sure DMA for that drive is enabled.

 

[Rockinacoustic]

Yup, it is. Thanks though.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Bad data cable?

Don't know if it still applies, but in the past, some DVD burners really needed to be master on an ide channel to work well.

Anything running in the background that might have priority over the drive?

 

[Rockinacoustic]

I doubt that, i recently just placed a new IDE cable in it. As for background programs I have nothing intensive running.

I should also note that I have 512mb of ram (rest of the system includes Athlon 3500+ and a 6600gt), but I seriously doubt my small amount of memory is the culprit.

My guess is this: recently I updated the firmware on the drive, for which i had to create a bootable flash drive to install the firmware. I'm guessing something went wrong, and since then I've had nothing but trouble. I uninstalled the drive today, and rebooted making sure all the proper settings were set, however the firmware update is still there, and HP doesn't have anything for me too roll back on.