[sarahlina]

Hello kind folks,

I use a Dell Laptop - Inspiron 5100 - Windows XP.

I recently was overwhelmed by many, many viruses on my computer, including adware virtumondo - which invited winfixer and wild tangent. This was all in the past 2 weeks. I have since had someone help me remove the viruses successfully. (But not wild tangent).

However, ever since then, I have had very poor video playback on all my media players, including DIVX, Real player and Windows Media 10.

The video plays (from CD, DVD or computer file) fine for a while. Then it starts to break down, becoming very jumpy/choppy. It mostly affects video, audio seems to be OK. To deal with it, I just press Pause on the player for a while, and then press Play again, and do that over and over. In some cases, I have to restart the machine.

I called the Dell Technical Service line and they had me run a hardware diagnostics and check the DVD player for any damages - the computer passed the test so they think it is a software problem.

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have you tried updating all of the software that you're using...also your video card driver?

[dsenette]

have you tried updating all of the software that you're using...also your video card driver?

[sarahlina]

I have Windows Media 10. When I was on the phone with Dell they had me run a test and they said my drivers were ok.

[sarahlina]

Can Anyone help? I feel like its getting worse...

[Retired Tech]

Can you install Winamp to see how it runs

http://www.filehippo...ownload_winamp/

Also this

http://www.filehippo...player_classic/

If these play then you could remove Real Player and re-install it, roll back Media Player then re-install it

http://www.filehippo...s_media_player/

If those do not change anything

Open the CD ROM Drive used to install Windows, insert the XP CD but leave the drawer open. Click start then run, type sfc /scannow then press enter and close the CD ROM Drive drawer. You will get a blue progress bar, after the bar goes, reboot. This will check for and replace missing or corrupt system files.

You can check for an improvement after running sfc /scannow then after each step until you have run through them all, if necessary

Click start, all programmes, accessories, system tools to run disc clean up, then from system tools, run disc defragmenter.

Click start then run, type prefetch then press enter, click edit then select all, all the files in the folder will now be highlighted, right click any file, click delete, a box will appear asking if you want to delete all the files, confirm the delete then reboot

Click start then run, type chkdsk /f /r then press enter, type Y to confirm for next boot, press enter then reboot.

This will take an hour, it will appear to load normally then either the monitor will show progress or the screen will go blank, do not disturb this.

When it gets to the desktop, the system files and the hard drive will be as they should

If no change

Please go here to repair your operating system

Repair XP

If you are unable to run Repair XP

Alternate XP Repair Guide

Use the last one - Windows Installation CD to repair the current installation, which uses a slightly different method

Windows XP repair feature won't delete your data, installed programs, personal information, or settings. It just repairs the operating system

After running the repair it will be necessary to install all Windows Updates

Microsoft Update

The next steps are optional

Get the trial of Tune Up 2006 here

Tune Up 2006 Trial

Run disc clean up then registry clean up, then click optimize to run reg defrag, which needs a reboot

After the reboot, open Tune Up, click optimize and improve, system optiomization to run, optimize the computer configuration, which needs a reboot

If you use accelerate downloads in system optimization, select the speed which is just above your actual line speed

[sarahlina]

I downloaded the new programs you suggested but had the same problems when I tried to play a DVD - in fact my whole computer slowed down. I will try your other advice now - thanks.

[Fenor]

Even though Microsoft claims that WMP10 can play DVD's, it has a very hard time on many machines. One question i wanna ask though is how much RAM is on your LAPTOP? Needs to be 256MB minimum to play a DVD movie. I've seen laptops with less memory still play DVD's fine, but not that often.

Try getting VLC Media Player and see how it goes. It doesn't need any type of plugin to play DVD's unlike other programs like WMP and such. If that doesn't work, try and get your hands on PowerDVD or WinDVD and see how things go. VLC is free whereas the other two cost money so I would still try VLC first and if that fails go for the others.

Fenor

[sarahlina]

I have 512 RAM on my laptop. I've had the laptop for awhile and never had a problem playing DVDs until recently. WINDVD is already installed on my computer and it freezes up too.

[gerryf]

Right-click My Computer, select Properties, click on the Hardware tag, click on the Device Manager button, click on the plus sign to the left of IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, double-click on the secondary IDE channel, click on Extended Settings and check whether it is set to DMA when available.

Underneath there is a grey box showing the mode of your IDE channel. What is it?

[sarahlina]

Under Device 0 it is set to DMS if available. Underneath there is a box that says Cureent Transfer Mode - it says - Ultra DMA Mode 5

Under Device 1 it is also set to DMA if available but for current Transfer Mode it says Not Applicable

I hope this is the info you were looking for

[sarahlina]

I ran the disc clean up but after analysis, the defrag tool told me that I didn't need to defrag anything.

[gerryf]

that was it, are you certain it was secondary IDE channel (not primary)

My suspician was your PC had dropped into PIO mode, but that does not sound like it is the case here...BUT

Your cd-rom/dvd-rom should never be ultradma mode 5 (this is ata133--no optical drive I am aware of uses ata133)

I wonder if you chose the wrong ide controller since what you reported makes no sense.

Please check again.

There is a PRIMARY and SECONDARY.

On a typical machine, you have a harddrive on the primary, using udma 5, and the cd-dvd rom on the secondary using udma 2, 1 or PIO mode,

[sarahlina]

I double checked my steps. I am definitly in the secondary IDE Channel Properties window. Then I clicked on Advanced setting (there is no extended settings tab). There are two devices listed - Device 0 and Device 1. Device 0 says that the current transfer mode is Ultra DMA Mode 5. The device type is auto detection and the transfer mode is DMA if available. Device 1 has the same settings except the current transfer mode says Not Applicable.

I checked the primary channel and it is in the PIO mode.

[gerryf]

well, that is wrong, too....

download Everest Home

http://www.lavalys.c...p?pid=1&lang=en

unzip it, install it, and then save a report and attach it to your next post

[sarahlina]

I ran a report for the whole computer - it is really long - do you want me to post the whole thing or just a specific section?