[sarahlina]

OK the computer has been on about half and hour and I've watched the temp go up to 41 degrees.

[Advertisements]

That's a good improvement...

How does the machine seem to run? Have you tried to play a DVD? Check the temps during a movie or, ideally, right when a problem occurs...if one occurs.

wannabe1

[wannabe1]

That's a good improvement...

How does the machine seem to run? Have you tried to play a DVD? Check the temps during a movie or, ideally, right when a problem occurs...if one occurs.

wannabe1

[sarahlina]

The temp is at 46 degrees now. I tried playing a DVD and the CPU usuage instantly went up to 100% and within a few minutes it became choppy again....

[wannabe1]

Let's give the DVD player a little higher priority for memory usage.

Play a DVD and while it's playing, bring up Task Manager. (Ctrl + Alt + Delete)

Click on the "Processes" tab. Now look in the list for something related to DVD or the player you are using. When you find it, right click on it, point to "Set Priority", and select "AboveNormal".

Does this help the choppy play?

Did the temperature ever go higher than the 46*C that you posted earlier? If not, then we've got the temperature about where we want it...

wannabe1

[sarahlina]

The temp stayed between 46 and 48 degrees. Changing the memory priority did not help I'm sad to say...

The guy who had been helping me when I first posted thought it was a problem with the memory too. He had written that my cd-rom has reverted to PIO mode instead of DMA and I needed to get the drive back in DMA mode. But I don't know how to do that.

[protrak]

Hi Guys.
To get my drives i followed these steps
Rigth click on My Computer
Click Properties
Hardware, Device Manager
Expand IDE Controler
Right Click Secondary IDE Channel
Uninstall (this will uninstall your drive, dont panic it will reinstall on startup)
Reboot your system
The drives will reinstall by themselves once u are using XP
go back to my computer
Rightclick and go back to the Secondary IDE Channel
Click Properties
Advance Settings
Change the Transfer Mode of both Device 0 and Device 1 to "DMA if available"
Click OK and close out
Restart your system
check the settings you just made
if your current transfere mode is "Ultra DMA Mode 2" you are good to
PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST UNINSTALL FIRST OR IT WILL NOT WORK!

[sarahlina]

Can anyone confirm these directions? I'm just asking so as to have the confirmation of a staff member?

[sarahlina]

Can anyone please confirm these directions? I don't want to do anything till I know for sure....Please?

[Discloner]

I've got the exact same Laptop (Inspiron 5100) with the same exact problem...so I'm interested to see if a cause or solution can be found to this problem. Videos play for a short time, then start getting choppy and freeze up (DivX seems to be the worst. The audio continues to play fine, then after a while of frozen/choppy video it plays double speed to catch up). Likewise Streaming media has been suffering A LOT lately as a result of video doing this. I can't even watch a 5 minute presentation anymore without it getting all bogged up and choppy to the point where it no long works anymore (Though Audio seems to work fine).

Initially I thought perhaps my computer was just full of stuff (though admittedly I should've known that wasn't the case with 30Gigs (only 14 of which being used) of hard drive space and 512MBs of RAM), but even after cleaning up my computer the video playback won't work. I haven't watched any DVDs on the computer for some time, but I do recall them skipping as well.

Quite bothersome.

EDIT: Oh! And my Secondary IDE Channel reads exactly the same as Sarah's did when whomever asked her to check the settings.

Edited by Discloner, 09 February 2006 - 11:01 PM.

[sarahlina]

Wow - that was really interesting to read - we have the exact same issues. Do you have any problems with overheating as well?

[Discloner]

Wow - that was really interesting to read - we have the exact same issues. Do you have any problems with overheating as well?

No not that I'm aware of. I generally worry about the laptop overheating, so I keep the fan and vent clear of any obstuction. Sometimes I'll even prop the back end up with something to help get some more cooler air through. Occassionally the fan turns itself up, but I suppose that's to expected; especially when the computer is thinking extra hard.

[sarahlina]

Can anyone confirm these instructions?

[Siobhan Ward]

Hi sarahlina,

I've been having pretty much the exact same problems you've been experiencing with my Dell 1100 Inspiron notebook. However, the "fix" listed by protrak isn't one. I've run through those steps, and, provided that it was caused simply by scratchy DVDs degrading your IDE setting, it should have fixed it. In my case, it didn't. No effect whatsoever. If you want to give it a shot, go ahead. But it didn't work for me.

Also, I've seen it mentioned that Ultra DMA Mode 5 (or something of that nature) isn't a valid setting for the Secondary IDE setting, but following an uninstall and reinstall of the driver, it just went automatically to that setting again.