Media playback problem

V

Vic

Regular
I have an ATI 1650 Pro grahics card in my PC. A few months ago, my media playback started become very jerky whilst watching video and listening to music off my HDD, almost like my PC doesnt have enough processing power to do it smoothly. The problem has got worse recently, to the point where within a few minutes, playback stutters and I get a lot of slowdown, particularly whilst watching videos.

I dont get this problem when watching videos off a flash drive that I have.

Anyone have any idea why this might be? Could it be a display driver problem? For the record, I have lots of space on my HDD, and the issue ocurrs even when I dont have other programs running. This problem has been occurring with WMP, VLC Player and Divx player.

This is really starting irritate me, so any help would be great appreciated.
 
Whats pio mode?

I've done some quick tests with Seatools for windows (a checking tool for seagate HDD's), and I've found the following:

When I do S.M.A.R.T. TEST, I almost immediately get a drive status of SMART-FAIL.

If I do a short or long drive self test I also get a fail.

If I do a short generic test it says pass, but fail if I do a long generic test.

Does anyone know if this could be the root cause of the problem? Could it be a firmware issue?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Vic said:
Whats pio mode?

I've done some quick tests with Seatools for windows (a checking tool for seagate HDD's), and I've found the following:
Click to expand...

Grab the bootable dos version.

When I do S.M.A.R.T. TEST, I almost immediately get a drive status of SMART-FAIL.

If I do a short or long drive self test I also get a fail.

If I do a short generic test it says pass, but fail if I do a long generic test.

Does anyone know if this could be the root cause of the problem? Could it be a firmware issue?
Click to expand...
Not a firmware issue. You probably have a failing HDD. Check your HDD cabling. There's a number of SMART reporting utils, but grab speedfan, go to the SMART tab & see whether you have any current pending sectors & see what your reallocated sector count is. To address current pending sectors, run the dos seatools util. Select long test & allow it to fix the errors it finds. Some hardware errors can't be sorted & you'll need to RMA your HDD. Seagate warrants their drives against bad sectors, so you can RMA the drive even if there are remappable sectors available.
 
Davros said:
device manager -- primary ide adapter -- advanced settings
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice guys.

For the record, device manager says that transfer mode is DMA if available, but that the current transfer mode is PIO mode.

Is this likely to be a problem?
 
Vic said:
Thanks for the advice guys.

For the record, device manager says that transfer mode is DMA if available, but that the current transfer mode is PIO mode.

Is this likely to be a problem?
Click to expand...

Yes, it will be slower and use more CPU time. It certainly could be the source of the problems you are describing. Manually change it to DMA and see what happens.
 
a month ago a PC with same issue came to me for "reinstalling"
The solution: changed to which onboard sata connector the cable from HDD was connected.
SATA connectors suck.
 
The problem isn't usually the connector, it's more likely to be Windows throwing a wobbly at seeing too many retries and silently dropping to PIO. It happens more on DVD drives (dodgy discs can trigger it more often) but I have seen it on hard drives too. Sometimes the drive has issues, mostly it's because it was busy or doing thermal calibration or something and Windows has to wait. Get enough of those "can't access the disk right now" kind of responses, and Windows barfs and drops to PIO.

Moving the connector probably re-initialised the drivers for the "new" drive that appeared, and gave you a DMA setting by default.
 
I noticed my pc seemed slow i ran a hdd benchmark and read speed was about 3mb a sec
I checked and the drive was in pio mode
I forgot to install the via raid drivers (needed with my board even though I dont use raid, just a single sata hdd)
and read speed jumped to 60mb a sec
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
Yes, it will be slower and use more CPU time. It certainly could be the source of the problems you are describing. Manually change it to DMA and see what happens.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but how do I do this?

I have 'DMA if available' selected for both device 0 and device 1.

Under device 0, current transfer mode is 'Not applicable', and device 1 is 'PIO mode' which doesnt appear to be changeable in this screen.
 
Vic said:
Sorry, but how do I do this?

I have 'DMA if available' selected for both device 0 and device 1.

Under device 0, current transfer mode is 'Not applicable', and device 1 is 'PIO mode' which doesnt appear to be changeable in this screen.
Click to expand...

On some systems it would be changeable (it was on my old Nforce 2 board) depending on the devices.

The alternative way is to go to "start menu -> control panel -> system -> device manager" and then remove the ide devices/controller. Then reboot when prompted and your IDE devices should be re-detected with the correct settings.

You've not really given us any hardware information - are you sure you are running all the correct drivers for your hardware? Some motherboards need the correct drivers from the manufacturer before you get proper operation of stuff like this.
 
Davros, you are a legend. I followed that site, and got my transfer rate changed to Ultra DMA mode. That really is a bizarre quirk of windows, I've never heard about this issue before. It was making my PC sooo slow, but hopefully that is gone now.

I guess this thread can be deleted, though maybe some may want to keep it for achive purposes? Thanks again guys.
 
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