Laptop skipping what do i do?

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UT-Jackal

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 2, 2004
Messages
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My girlfriends laptop has been "skipping." :confused: Like if we play music it skips and when you move the mouse around it like jumps as if it is skipping. I hope you understand what I mean. Any ideas whats wronge and how i can fix it?? Thanks in advance
 
umm try reformatting. OS might be bad. i remember my comp started acting up like that, it ended up being my OS. give that a try if you can. if not then try atleast a system repair or check disk
 
You have a driver issue somewhere, Did you upgrade BIOS/Video Driver/Sound Driver just before it started skipping? Make sure you have the newest drivers if the upgrade wasn't the problem.
 
she only updated her windows update today, but its been acting up for about 5 days. Last time she did any driver\windows update was like 5 months ago. She really doesnt want to reformat... she is really against reformating for some reason. Any ideas on how to fix this without reformating? Thanks for the replies
 
yeah. it's about a year old. she didn't use it over summer though since she went back to her house. it worked fine at the beginning of summer.
 
UT-Jackal said:
My girlfriends laptop has been "skipping." :confused: Like if we play music it skips and when you move the mouse around it like jumps as if it is skipping. I hope you understand what I mean. Any ideas whats wronge and how i can fix it?? Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Is DMA mode enabled?
 
Go into the Control Panel
To to System
Under the Hardware tab go into Device Manager
Then go under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
Then right click on the primary IDE channel and see if DMA is ON.
 
Are you playing CD's or MP3's?

Stop using WinAmp. It F'ing sucks. So a search for skipping in the forums and see how many times people have posted with the "Help, My WinAmp is skipping". The new versions are shit, plain and simple.

run Adaware, Spybot and CWShredder on her computer. While you at it, go to housecall.trendmicro.com and run a virus scan on her computer.

How many processes are running on her system? Go into MSCONFIG and disable all the crap that is starting with her computer and hogging her system resources.

Run a thorough Scan Disk and then Defrag.
 
ok, i'm the girlfriend. i've already ran ad-aware, symantec virus scanner, i defragmented, and i ran windows update. i checked the IDE. it is on, but it said if it isn't working properly that i can troubleshoot it or update the driver. should i do that?

and btw, it isn't only winamp that skips. the mouse skips while i'm dragging it across the screen also.
also i have a 27 GB hard-drive, only 1/4 of it is full, so it shouldn't be from that. also i have 384 MB of RAM and i only run AIM, MSN messenger, and winamp other than the normal processes ran by windows XP.

thanks everyone for the help. i wanna fix the problem and/or learn what to do if it happens again in the future. i DON"T want to reformat since i'll never learn what's wrong with it.
 
symantec can be comprimised. Run the housecall.trendmicro scan to be really sure.

do you have your screen resolution set insanely high?
 
ok i'll run the trend micro virus scanner and my resolution is 1400 by 1050. should i lower the resolution?
 
yeah, that is really high for a laptop.
I'll bet you have a custom background image that is really beautiful and have the color set to 32-bit, right?

What are the specs or what model is it?
 
ok. i put it on 16 bit and a 1280 by 1024 resolution. it's a dell inspiron 600m, windows xp, 275 MHz 384MB ram, and intel pentium m 1300 MHz
 
did those changes make a difference?

How much do you have loaded into memory right now?

CTRL+SHIFT+ESC will bring up task manager and the total will be in the lower right hand corner.
 
in the physical memory it says i have about 70,000 avilable, and the cpu is at only 32%, and i didn't notice a change once my resolution changed, and i'm still running the trend micro scanner.
 
Try disabling Norton and see if that has any effect.

the auto protect scans everything that you do to make sure that nothing bad is happening.

How many processes have been started under your username? Does anything look suspicious?
 
Heat could also be a factor.

If thermal throteling is kicking in, you could be running on as little as half of your CPU's designed power.
 
UT-Jackal said:
ok, i'm the girlfriend. i've already ran ad-aware, symantec virus scanner, i defragmented, and i ran windows update. i checked the IDE. it is on, but it said if it isn't working properly that i can troubleshoot it or update the driver. should i do that?
Click to expand...

So when you checked to see if you had DMA mode on. It shows that it is on but not working properly? Is that what you are saying? If that is the case then I believe that is your problem and you should stick your winXP cd in there and update the driver.
 
That is a standard windows message, sort of a CYA thing.

It wouldn't hurt to try to update the driver although I doubt it will be able to find a better match.
 
It's not standard for windows to say that this device is not working properly. It will usually say that when the drivers are messed up.
 
This device is working properly.

If you are having problems with this device, click Troubleshoot to start the troubleshooter.
Click to expand...

I'll bet this is what she was refering to.

and yes, that is normal.
 
yes you are correct black rhino. i think that you might be correct about the heat. i always thought that my underside of my laptop gets VERY hot. like if it is laying on my lap, and i take my laptop off, my legs are burning hot from the laptop. is there a way if i can see if the heat is what is causing it? also, if i can and it is a problem, can i do anything about it? my dad bought this laptop speficially b/c i can take out and replace almost everything from the cd-rom, hard-drive, processor. thanks
 
Does the fan ever come on?

turn it off and let it cool down. Start it up and try playing music right away. If you can play without any problems I would say your found the cause.

Unfortunately, if the fan is good then there is something wrong with the board and will have to be sent out to be fixed/warrented.
 
ok. i will try that, but the fan does come on sometimes. it doesn't run all the time though. the only thing is i've worried about in the past that i sit with it on my lap a lot. so i don't know if that prevents air-flow to the fan. but i will try that right now and i'll let you know
 
ok. i let my laptop cool off for about 40 minutes and all of the underside felt room temperature. i started up my computer and as soon as everything loaded, i tried to play music. and as usual about a minute and a half into the song, it started to skip. so i think we can rule out the fan for the cpu as the problem. if you have no more ideas and you think reformatting it will fix it, i guess i will give up and reformat it. let me know what you think
 
I have experienced "skipping" and jumpiness on various laptops when using wireless devices. Usually it would be the wireless card searching for an accessing point and that would bring the whole laptop to a standstill. Does the laptop have wireless?
 
oh my gosh. thank you everyone. i'm so sorry for taking up your time for something so stupid. when i first started experiencing my problem, i thought of disconnecting my internet, but i didn't once think of my wireless card causing the problem. but apparently that was the cause.
 
Do you have a dlink card? Just curious. That is what i have seen the problem with the most.
 
i have no clue. it's an internal wireless card. i think it's an intel centrino card.
 
what brand is it? if its Ibm just turn the sensitivity on the Hdd protection down.
 
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