November 17, 2004

Curious George : or more like Help me please George : Suddenly when playing DVDs on my laptop, the sound and picture are not in synch. When looking at Task Manager the CPU usage is permanantly at 100%, the DVD process seems to be taking up all of the spare resource. I use InterVideo WINDVD 4. Please help, I work away a lot and watch a hell of a lot of DVDs on the laptop.
posted by lloyder 20 years ago
  • what process in task manager is eating the CPU? check the list of running processes and sort by CPU usage; i found several times that the program i assumed was killing the system was actually not the main problem. also, InCD? i had issues with it on my laptop; things were skipping because winDVD and InCD were fighting for access to the disk. if you have it (and don't use it) kill it. might help. check also virus scanners, shut down before playing.
  • Had a look on Task Manager, WinDVD.exe is the process hogging all the resource. Also tried playing DVDs via Realplayer. Hit the same problem. Don't seem to have InCD on the list. Thanks for trying though.
  • I think spyware or a virus is a likely suspect.
  • Spyware/malware could have replaced a core Windows-level DLL that all the DVD software relies upon to run. Consider running Spybot S+D and/or Adaware to clean your system. Google searches will get you what you need.
  • I have a related problem with running video online. After I play a couple of clips (doesn't matter what player or format), my system starts to slow down big time. It's especially noticeable since I have the bare minimum of RAM for a DSL connection (and I'm not spending money on more RAM -- I get a new pc after Christmas). Some kind of memory leak, I guess?
  • I alway suggest making sure that all the crap is turned off down in the system tray in the lower right hand corner. I also turn off a bunch of services too, but that's fairly dangerous. Look up "black viper" if you want to go that hardcore and you will find a list of services you can turn off.
  • Is DMA enabled for your DVD drive? For some reason, the setting would disable itself on my PC once in a while, and my DVD playback would slow to a crawl. If you need instructions, scroll about three-quarters of the way down this page to the Troubleshooting section.
  • Keep in mind that software playback of DVDs is a bit flakey in general. You might have just come across a DVD that doesn't agree perfectly with your set up. I use PowerDVD and have had some problems with freezing, though they have lessened over time; I assume because the encoding of DVDs has become more standardized. One thing I find helps sometimes is not running my net connection at the same time.
  • Try using VLC www.videolan.org It does do menu support, but I've had the odd one that screws up. Either way, VLC plays the main title. As an added bonus, you can transcode it across a network and broadcast the DVD for other people to watch. Also, it's not a region protection type player so you have a better chance of playing all region dvd's (if your dvd drive is RPC1) P.S. It's FREE!!!!
  • DMA is enabled - but still having problems. Run a full Adaware scan & Norton virus check and also still having problems.
  • Please provide some specs on your PC (OS, RAM, CPU, etc). Had you installed any software or OS updates just before the problem started? You might want to check for updates to your video driver, and if you normally run Windows with a high screen resolution, try dropping it to 800x600 before playing a DVD.