Poor DVD performance with a Compaq laptop

[Uuplaku]

Hey guys,

My Mom's laptop performs poorly when playing DVD's in the DVD/CR-R combo drive. The video and sound skips every few seconds, and thats basically making the movies unwatchable. The laptop is a Compaq Presario 700Z, with a Toshiba SD-R2102 combo drive. The software were using is Intervideo WinDVD 3.0. Anyone know a solution to this problem?

 

[newbiepcuser]

It could be defective dvd drive also? Try another software, see if you can get a copy of PowerDVD and see if that works better. How much RAM do you have?

Also, I know Compaq/HP has a lot of software starting up in the background. You might want to kill some of the software loading in the background.

What does your take manager say concerning RAM, etc?

 

[Uuplaku]

Originally posted by: newbiepcuser
How much RAM do you have?

256 megs.

Also, I know Compaq/HP has a lot of software starting up in the background. You might want to kill some of the software loading in the background.

Tried that. Improved performance slightly, but didnt kill the problem.

What does your take manager say concerning RAM, etc?

When playing DVDs, it puts the CPU load at 100%. Don t know about RAM, but the Page File usage is at about 150 megs.

 

[Arcanedeath]

Go into the Device Manager and make sure DMA is enabled for your Optical drive, it sounds like it's running in PIO mode, I had this same issue w/ an old Gateway laptop and enabling DMA resolved the issue

 

[StraightPipe]

also check and be sure that antivirus/IM/extra stuff is off, it can use up CPU

 

[Uuplaku]

Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
Go into the Device Manager and make sure DMA is enabled for your Optical drive, it sounds like it's running in PIO mode, I had this same issue w/ an old Gateway laptop and enabling DMA resolved the issue

I tried to do that, but there was no option to enable DMA on the drive itself, so I attempted to enable DMA on the second IDE channel in the Device Manager menu. I selected the "DMA if available" option, but upon rebooting it stated that the current device was still in PIO mode. No matter what I do, I cant enable DMA on the second IDE channel.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Uuplaku

Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
Go into the Device Manager and make sure DMA is enabled for your Optical drive, it sounds like it's running in PIO mode, I had this same issue w/ an old Gateway laptop and enabling DMA resolved the issue

I tried to do that, but there was no option to enable DMA on the drive itself, so I attempted to enable DMA on the second IDE channel in the Device Manager menu. I selected the "DMA if available" option, but upon rebooting it stated that the current device was still in PIO mode. No matter what I do, I cant enable DMA on the second IDE channel.

Remove the Secondary IDE controller (or whichever the DVD drive is on) and let Windows re-detect it; sometimes that takes care of the problem. It should go to DMA mode; it supports it. Specs.