egafd.com

Whether I'm playing downloaded media files or DVDs my system seems to be struggling.
After a minute or so it starts to "stutter" along almost stopping then picks up again only to run out of steam again.
I'm running XP and I've tried alternative players to WMP. I've also tried a couple of DVD players but the results are always the same.
Anyone got any ideas?

Mart

VideoLan, try searching for VideoLan, its a good Media Player, it plays damn near every Media Format, Music as well as Video.

But if your system is acting like this, I would think it would actually be 1 of 2 things, either low on Memory, or low on Hard Disc Space, even with good amount of Memory, the computer needs a certain amount of Disc Space, for the OS to work, & for the Virtual Swap File.

Yep I agree. Try cleaning the shite of your PC, and defrag the HDD. Terminate all apps that are running that you don't need when viewing media files.

You may want to check that your codecs are up to date and also go to Start > Run and then type dvdupgrd /detect

Click OK

If it comes up with more than one DVD Decoder that may also be your problem.

I'd be looking at a list of about half dozen things.

1, Not enough available memory (Ram)

1, A), Upgrade or run less programs.


2, Not enough storage available (Hard disk)

2, A), Delete the crap or get a bigger drive.


3, Clashing Codecs ?

3, A), Uninstall ALL current codecs, and install JUST the required one, Get a look at GSpot to find which codec then just install the one you need to check.


4, Movie Players Clashing.

4, A), Uninstall them all and try just one.


5, Badly encoded file ?

5, A), Try running an index re-generation program, or repair.


6, Video Cards Decoder is fucked.

6, A), Try another card of replace it, or buy a decoder card.


Finally The whole system is overall badly fragmented and lots of redundant files, or hard disk errors, run general clean up or format and restart.

Thanks guys. Progress so far.
I've cleaned out a number of unused programs and burned a lot of files to DVD, so I've got 5Gigs of space on my 20Gig hard drive.
I have 320MB of RAM, running XP on a Pentium III.
I defrag regularly.
Videolan plays a lot of av files OK but there are inconsistencies:
some but not all .avi
some .mpeg with no audio
some .wmv
there is the recurring "stuttering"
It won't play DVDs without the "stuttering".
I seem to have 3 DVD decoders, which should I get rid of and how?

Mart