[Samm]

Hi Donr53

Its OK, I think I know whats going on - memberix's post has reminded me...
Some CPU's have L1 and L2 cache, others only have L1. The motherboard will have L2 cache (external cache), which we checked was enabled in the bios.
Your particular cpu doesn't have L2 cache. I suspect Everest is simply reporting that no L2 cache is present in the CPU itself (as opposed to the CPU L2 cache being disabled or not functioning).

You could try updating the VIA chipset drivers, not to the latest release but to the latest release optimised the MVP chipsets. If you follow the link below, scroll down to the bottom of the page & download the driver thats listed under Retro chipset 4 in 1 drivers:

http://www.viaarena....ID=1&CatID=1070

If the Nvida drivers you currently have installed are reference drivers (from Nvidia's website), then you should also have the NVTweak Utility installed. If so, can you check in there that Enhanced CPU Instructions are NOT disabled?

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HI I believe that your right about the L2 cache. I downloaded a small program called testcpu. It showed L2 cache grayed out. I went to the museum tab and found my cpu. It said that it uses the L2 cache on the motherboard. I'm assuming that L2 cache is working, and doesn't cause the video problem.

Nvidia Enhanced cpu instructions is not disabled.

I downloaded the retro 4in1 drivers and installed them But no difference in the videos

What next Is it just that the computer is older and slower and I won't find a fix?????

Thanks again

[donr53]

HI I believe that your right about the L2 cache. I downloaded a small program called testcpu. It showed L2 cache grayed out. I went to the museum tab and found my cpu. It said that it uses the L2 cache on the motherboard. I'm assuming that L2 cache is working, and doesn't cause the video problem.

Nvidia Enhanced cpu instructions is not disabled.

I downloaded the retro 4in1 drivers and installed them But no difference in the videos

What next Is it just that the computer is older and slower and I won't find a fix?????

Thanks again

[Samm]

I think it's probably a combination of the computer being old & slow (although you certainly have sufficient memory installed) & the particular chipset you are using (i.e Via MVP3).

You may want to try this little tool for 'fixing' the latency timer on MVP3 boards with Nvidia graphics cards :
http://www.deinmeist.../mvp3_zlt_e.htm

Download the MVP3 PCI latency timer to 0 tool for NT4/win2000/XP.

Instructions are on the page - you have to extract it, run setup.exe, reboot, then double click on the mvp3_zlt.exe file.
If you have any problems with it, there some FAQs for this at the bottom of the page.


The only other thing that may help, if you can bear it, would be to completely wipe the C drive & reinstall Windows from scratch again. This often improves performance, at least temporarily. However, like i said, there's no guarantee it WILL fix the problem.

[memberix]

Or change the software you use for playing multimedia files. Use Winamp
for playing videos , it uses very little sytem resources just use classic skin and disable graphic analyzer and EQ.

[donr53]

I've downloaded both but can not tell you if they installed properly. the 4in1 chipset I believe did. The mvp3 tool the sepup.exe went by in a flash and after reboot double clicking on mvp3.exe seemed to do nothing.

I've also downloaded winamp. The full bundle. Now that's for playing the videos on the computer and not for dvd's correct??
Thanks

[Samm]

The mvp3 tool won't actually appear to do anything. You'll only see something if there's a problem.
And you're right, Winamp is for general audo/video, not DVDs, as far as I know.

You might want to try this as well :
http://www.microsoft...&displaylang=en

Its a utility from Microsoft that checks the video codecs installed & determines they're compatibility with Media Player. Codecs sometimes get overwritten or replaced by other codecs installed by third party programs, so this might be worth checking.

[memberix]

there are tousand of plugins for winamp. there a few for playing DVD. here is one http://www.nicemcmedia.com/w5plugin/ Try searching google for other
see if you find one that will work for you

Edited by memberix, 07 February 2006 - 07:20 PM.

[donr53]

Samm I did as memberix suggested and got the plugin for winamp. It does now play dvd's but are really choped up both audio and video.
I downloaded sherlock codec checker. I found that I couldn't use the one you suggested. ( I now understand why I don't have a cd to reinstall windows and why I can't download sp1) The special favor that had been done for me in payment for other things has turned out not to be such a good thing. ANYWAYS

sherlock showed one audio codec broken but when i went into control panel and checked under sounds and speech it says its working properly.

[Samm]

OK. Just been re-reading the previous posts & I was reminded that you said this problem started when you installed the DVD drive, right?
Can you tell me which multimedia programs you installed, if any, around that time?
Often DVD drives come with a CD with software on (such as Nero or PowerDVD) so these often get installed at the same time as the drive.

[Samm]

Another quick thought.....

Try using the older version of Windows Media Player (go to start->Run, then type in mplayer2 and click OK.
If this doesn't help, go to Control Panel->Display->Settings. Click on the Advanced button then select the Performance tab. Try decreasing the Hardware Acceleration by moving the slider all the way to the left. Also adjust the display properties to 800x600, 16 bit. If this doesn't make any difference, then move re-adjust the hardware acceleration back to full.

Can you also tell me which version of DirectX you have? To find out, go to start->Run & type dxdiag & click OK.

[donr53]

Hi Samm The video problem started before the dvd installation. I hadn't had a dvd player or burner before. When I installed the dvd burner, with power dvd and nero, it magified the exsisting problem.
I've run dxdiag and it's version 9c and everything checked out ok
It doesn't make any difference changing the resolution and color or acceleration

It seemed to have started a couple of months ago. The kids music videos were working, both audio and video. Then the audio would play good but no video. That was the case with Quicktime also.
I eventually got the video back, don't know how really, but the video is choppy, meaning it gets stuck every couple of frames.

With the dvd's it's the sound as well that's choppy meaning it get stuck or hesitates every few frames.

About that time I went from mp9 to mp10 I've since rolled it back
I uninstalled Quicktime and then installed the newest version , since then I went back
I had installed firefox and thunderbird and since uninstalled them
I've uninstalled some various updates that I had installed.
I've uninstalled various programs in search of an answer.

I do recall at one time telling something to uninstall shared dll's etc. that were not used by other programs
could be my problem but wouldn't know where to start.
It just seems that I am missing something or something is set to a wrong setting.

[Samm]

Right, you already have the latest version of directX, so upgrading that isn't an option.
Did you try the older version of media player? Running it from the Run command by typing mplayer2 will not start MediaPlayer v9 or 10 but version 6.4.

I don't think the problem is due to you uninstalling shared dlls. If a dll that a program requires is actually missing, then you get an error message saying so. However, what CAN happen, is that a DLL file may get overwritten by a different version of that same DLL. This is especially common with applications of a similar type, such as audio or video etc, because such programs often use some of the same DLLs. This means that if a particular DLL that is used by one program is then replaced by a newer version of that DLL by a second program, the original program may not work correctly.

However, this is only a possibility in your case & the fact that none of your applications that you use for playing DVDs with are working properly, rather suggests that this probably isn't a DLL issue.

Have you tried :

Emptying the TEMP folders? There should be one in the Windows folder and one in your Documents & Settings folder.

Deleting the temporary Internet files folder. You can do this from IE by going to Tools->Internet Options->General tab->Delete Files & delete cookies. Make sure you select Offline content to be deleted as well.

Defrag the hard drive

[memberix]

go to free-codecs.com and download the k-lite codec pack. you get a player called media player classic with it. use that to play your videos and dvd's

[donr53]

Samm I did everything you asked except I didn't delete cookies

Here's a thought, What is buffering and could that be a problem if the settings aren't set right?
It seems like the video could be waiting for itself to got caught up. And in the dvd it might mess up the audio. I don't know much about it or how to check for that. Is there a setting for that , that would controll the whole system?

[donr53]

I did as memberix suggested and downloaded the codec pack. It got rid of the entry for the boken codec, but the results of the dvd's etc is the same. What ever is wrong is consistant through the system.