Weird video freezing problem

edpearson

Junior Member
Jul 31, 2006
3
0
0
I'm having a strange and frustrating problem and was wondering if anyone here can offer any suggestions.

Whenever I play a video file my computer freezes after a while. It doesn't matter which format (I have tested .xvid, .mpg, .avi and .wmv) or which player (VLC fares slightly better than WMP which tends to crash immediately - VLC will usually go a few minutes). The computer requires a reset to get out of it, though occasionally it will reset itself.

There is nothing in the error logs (control panel / administrative tools) reported from either program, or indeed anything else out of the ordinary. I don't think it's a heat issue as the computer will happily play games for hours with no apparent issues and is well ventilated and well cooled. The notoriously inaccurate Asus PC Probe shows the CPU temperature as being 31C/87F and the motherboard temperature as being 38C/100F, which sounds about right.

In addition (though I'm not sure if it's related), when I start the computer up just before Windows explorer finally starts (i.e after the black XP loading screen but before the mouse pointer appears) I get a weird blocky screen which appears then goes away after a second or two, and things go on as normal. Image (apologies for the awful camerawork)

The computer is an E6600 running on an Asus P5W DH Deluxe with bios revision 1101 (the latest on Asus' site). It has 2Gb of Corsair RAM and an Asus EN7950 GX2 card with the latest Forceware. It's running XP MCE with DirectX 9.0c and the latest drivers for chipset, audio and so on, as well as all the XP updates that Microsoft can throw at it. I don't think there's anything wrong with the video card, as it seems quite capable of comparatively difficult things such as gaming and 3D mark stuff.

Any help is hugely appreciated :)
 

PurdueRy

Lifer
Nov 12, 2004
13,837
4
0
I guess my gut instinct is corrupted video card drivers. I would clean them off with driver cleaner pro then reinstall.
 

edpearson

Junior Member
Jul 31, 2006
3
0
0
Tried that, it didn't work. Interestingly the weird pre-explorer blocky bit wasn't there while the drivers were uninstalled (i.e. at the reboot between safe mode/Driver Cleaner and back to XP to install the new drivers).

Maybe it's the card, but surely it'd show itself in other ways if that were the case - i.e. crash while playing games, etc.?

Thanks anyway.