Little help needed: My comp runs videos horribly...

**Smith** · 01-31-2006, 02:13 AM

I dont quite understand this. My dad has a P2 233 laptop and I can play videos on it with little to no lag on it (95% of the time none). MY computer right now is a P3 800 with 384mb of ram, and pretty much anything I try to play on it runs like total shit. I'm using VLC too. Ive turned my soround sound off to 2.1 but no difference.

I dont quite get it. Most of the time for every 15 seconds of sound I see one frame. Its horrible.

Any suggestions, tips, tricks?

**Virtualbody1234** · 01-31-2006, 02:24 AM

What graphics card?
What drivers do you have for it?

**Spicker** · 01-31-2006, 05:57 PM

You may have this problem if u hav ati card...

btw reinstalling directx is practically impossible i had to do a repair install of xp to fix the problem

Warning: ATI Catalyst drivers
Friday - January 20

On various forums people have reported major video playback problems. Parts of the DirectShow subsystem of DirectX are broken. We suspect that this might be the result of upgrading the ATI drivers. There is either a bug in the installation of the new 6.1 version of the ATI Catalyst video drivers, or something might go wrong during the removal of the old driver (perhaps an overly aggressive driver cleaner tool).

Re-installing DirectX will most likely fix the problem. Before re-installing DirectX we recommend deleting the file quartz.dll, to force a full re-install of that component.

**Smith** · 01-31-2006, 06:26 PM

Its a nVidia GF2 mx 220, 32meg. They pretty recient drivers, within the last month or two.

**shk** · 01-31-2006, 10:41 PM

Originally Posted by TheCanuk

Its a nVidia GF2 mx 220, 32meg. They pretty recient drivers, within the last month or two.

I hope you know to turn off vertical sync completely; this would be in the advanced options when you right click desktop -> properties -> settings tab. In that same advanced window, you could try tweaking for performance rather than quality, make the antialiasing less, etc. You sound like you've got a very naughty problem though...make sure no heat issues with the comp (if you experience crashes during intense games this is a telltale sign). Then of course the typical checking that you dont have some weird spyware or something severely depressing your comp, e.g. I used to have a problem playing some games with iexplorer.exe in background (sometimes it didnt shut off completely) so anything taking up lots of memory in your task manager is no goodie. 1 frame/15 seconds of sound is bad though that might be some kind of problem with the game or something. Btw I hope ur not playing hl2 or fear on that card lol.

**Smith** · 02-02-2006, 12:48 PM

No heat issues, no spyware or viruses. No games, I just want to play videos. AA/VS is not on.

**shk** · 02-07-2006, 04:04 AM

Originally Posted by TheCanuk

No heat issues, no spyware or viruses. No games, I just want to play videos. AA/VS is not on.

Oops sorry I thought u said games for a second there. If its video, try running it in different players and different computers. Try updating your codecs (right clicking video -> properties -> summary (advanced)) and then if you are using windows media player (update it), you can go to settings, wherever that is lol, and try to find the graphics accelerated slider (video tab probably) and put that up as much as possible. Other things u can try is resizing window, sometimes full screen and large windows lag cause they are interpolating (duplicating pxiels to accomodate larger spans of area). Also you could check out microsoft's knowledge database or search google obviously, but you'd need to be specific with describing the problem.