Choppy playback on Dell XPS 1710

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gunnm74

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jun 13, 2000
Messages
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When I bought this laptop, I thought that one of the nice benefits would be that I could watch DVDs in style. However, I find that the included Sonic DVD player plays back DVDs so badly that they're unwatchable, Windows Media Player 10 doesn't even display any of the visuals (though I can hear the sound is choppy) and VLC plays them back smoothly until it gets to a chapter change, at which point it hiccups. Obviously, it's not a video, memory or processor problem.

I think the only thing I've installed (other than "required" Windows updates) is iTunes 7.0.2 since the last time I played back a DVD (the only time I played one back). Could it be some of the always running iTunes executables that causes this problem or do I need to make any changes in the BIOS or does my DVD-rom drive just suck?

Specs:

2ghz core duo
1gb ram
60gb 7200 rpm sATA HD
GeForce Go GS 7900 w/ 256mb RAM
XP Pro SP 2
DVD+-RW dual layer drive
 
Did you reformat it when you first got it? Gota get rid of all the Dell aids.

My m1210 plays dvds and HD video just fine...do you have the NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder? That should help and offload all the decoding to the video card.
 
you should go about updating your video drivers before anything else, and iTunes is not the problem.
 
I updated my video drivers from Dell's web site shortly after setting up the PC. I'm currently using the 84.29 drivers. I would have gotten the latest drivers from nVidia's site, but i'd heard that drivers not specifically approved by the laptop manufacturer can cause problems. Admittedly, this was years ago, when good laptop graphics chips had 32mb video RAM. Has that situation changed with these new video chipsets?

WRT reinstalling Windows, I just got a new hard drive in the mail and I'll try installing a clean version of XP onto it.

Another thing I noticed was that both devices on both IDE controllers are set to "DMA if available." However, the first device on the second IDE controller is set to PIO mode, despite choosing "DMA if available". It's mystifying that there appear to be two IDE devices, despite the fact that the hard drive is sATA. Any way to figure out which controller the DVD-ROM drive is on?
 
gunnm74 said:
I updated my video drivers from Dell's web site shortly after setting up the PC. I'm currently using the 84.29 drivers. I would have gotten the latest drivers from nVidia's site, but i'd heard that drivers not specifically approved by the laptop manufacturer can cause problems. Admittedly, this was years ago, when good laptop graphics chips had 32mb video RAM. Has that situation changed with these new video chipsets?
Click to expand...
Version: 84.63 "Adds support for Dell XPS M1710 and Inspiron E1705 laptops."
& "Adds support for GeForce Go GS 7900"
Looks like you want the newest :p
 
After re-installing a clean copy of Windows and all of the device drivers last night, DVD playback was just fine. I think it's using the 84.29 drivers, now. I also checked my DMA settings. I'm still not sure which controller the DVD/ROM drive is on, but one IDE device is set to DMA-5 and one is set to DMA-2. No more forced PIO mode.

Here's something I learned last night:

For folks who have just purchased a new Dell XPS, Inspiron, whatever... you'll never get it clean enough to perform as well as you want by uninstalling all of the crap Dell puts on it. De-crapifier works pretty well but doesn't get all of the "hooks" of many of these crappy programs out of the OS.

Before re-installing Windows, I'd have about 600mb of RAM free after startup. After the re-installation, I've got about 725mb free.

The difference between the old install and the new install is night and day.
 
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