My 3 GHz P4 can't play music or movies without stuttering/skipping

[beer]

I have a Dell 8300 that I grabbed from HD a year ago, and it's been great, except that over the last couple of months, it developed the extremely, extremely annoying habit of not being able to play music or movies without stuttering - both the audio stream and video stream lag. I thought it may have been a disk fragmentation issue, but after defraging it still happens, and overall fragmentation is low. Both 80 GB disks have about 30 GB free, and swap file is adequate. The machine has 1 GB RAM so I don't think that is the issue. As mentioned, both Microsoft AntiSpyware and AdAware have no threats on the radar.

I'm using interated 5.1 sound and it has an Fx 5200 video, nothing spectacular but it was cheap. Does anyone have any ideas, short of reformatting? It would take an entire day and I'm really smashed between classes, work, and job searching.

 

[m3rcury]

Sounds like DMA problem. Check if DMA is enabled on your hard drives. My athlon 3000+ gets really choppy sound/video when dma is turned off.

If that doesn't help, then try disabling "active monitoring" programs, like real time antivirus and stuff.

And if all else fails, format.

 

[UsandThem]

Could your CPU be throttling down?

I had very bad thermal issues when I had a Dell. My computer would actually shut down because of the heat.

Do you know if the CPU is a Northwood or Prescott?

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: m3rcury
Sounds like DMA problem. Check if DMA is enabled on your hard drives. My athlon 3000+ gets really choppy sound/video when dma is turned off.

If that doesn't help, then try disabling "active monitoring" programs, like real time antivirus and stuff.

And if all else fails, format.

I have tried disabling all the real-time stuff, same thing happens. Now, where would DMA be at? I too speculated that, but the device manager doesn't seem to have that as an option within the properties of the hard disks, and the Dell BIOS is very limited.

And I'm not sure on what gen P4 it is. I can run CPUz when I get home and look into it. I know it is running at 2.99/3 Ghz (says CPUz so I don't think thermal throttling is the issue).

 

[UsandThem]

Originally posted by: beer

Originally posted by: m3rcury
Sounds like DMA problem. Check if DMA is enabled on your hard drives. My athlon 3000+ gets really choppy sound/video when dma is turned off.

If that doesn't help, then try disabling "active monitoring" programs, like real time antivirus and stuff.

And if all else fails, format.

I have tried disabling all the real-time stuff, same thing happens. Now, where would DMA be at? I too speculated that, but the device manager doesn't seem to have that as an option within the properties of the hard disks, and the Dell BIOS is very limited.

And I'm not sure on what gen P4 it is. I can run CPUz when I get home and look into it. I know it is running at 2.99/3 Ghz (says CPUz so I don't think thermal throttling is the issue).

DMA in XP:

Hardware > Device Manager > IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers

As far as your CPU throttling down, it would only start doing that when something is being CPU intensive because of generating more heat. I don't know if CPUz would report it though.

 

[LTC8K6]

It's probably not throttling. I vote for the DMA problem.

You can download Throttlewatch to check for throttling, and HDtach to benchmark your drive to see if it's running at UDMA speeds.

You want to check your IDE controllers in device manager. That's where you will find the DMA settings.

If you find a controller that is stuck in PIO mode, uninstall it and let windows redetect it. That should restore UDMA operation.

 

[beer]

Originally posted by: LTC8K6
It's probably not throttling. I vote for the DMA problem.

You can download Throttlewatch to check for throttling, and HDtach to benchmark your drive to see if it's running at UDMA speeds.

You want to check your IDE controllers in device manager. That's where you will find the DMA settings.

If you find a controller that is stuck in PIO mode, uninstall it and let windows redetect it. That should restore UDMA operation.

Wonderful, I'll check it when I get home. Appreciate the help, guys - I was looking for DMA settings not in the controllers, but in the attached devices themselves.

 

[Soulkeeper]

irq conflict maybe ??
try switch a pci card around if the other solutions don't work.
Also, like mentioned above, make sure your P4 isn't throttling on ya and double check your bios settings.
The latest version of DX should also be installed with updated drivers if possible.

good luck

 

[0roo0roo]

yea dma or something like that..driver.
fragmentation is nothing these days..
even a throttled cpu would play music

 

[renierh]

i would suggest checking the latency settings in the bios. i had the same problem once, and that did it for me. its usually on 64, so switch it to 128 or 32, just something different.

 

[beer]

Well I checked, and the second channel holding the DVD Burner and CDROM, were indeed on PIO Mode - I swithced it to UDMA if available, and now they're running on UDMA Mode 2. However, the primary channel was on UDMA 5, and HD Tach gave results inline with their recorded tests of similar drives.

I wonder if that fixed it. I'll keep this thread updated

 

[ShadowBlade]

thats intel for ya

 

[NightCrawler]

PIO mode sucks I wish Windows would notify you when it changes the mode.