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10-10-2003, 02:53 AM
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#1 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 1,091
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Playing DVD Movies freezes Computer
This is a problem that went away for about a year and then has come back. (Although there's a good reason for it)
What happens is if i play a DVD on my computer it will lock up at some point during the movie, I'll either get some looping sound or silence- and no response from mouse/kb inputs. I need to do a hard reboot. This has happened at least once per movie for every movie i've played in it recently.
Quick specs:
Audigy X-Gamer with latest drivers
A7V133
Win XP Pro with latest patches
Using PowerDVD5 software (This happened wth PowerDVDXP too though)
Like I said above- the problem did go away for about a year but that is because I had my Klipsch PM5.1's hooked up to my computer via the Klipsch DD5.1 reciever. Therefore I was just using SPDIF out on the Audigy and having the reciever do the decoding.
I first thought it was the creative drivers' AC-3 decoding doing it but recently I've been using PowerDVD5's Dolby Headphone mode and disabling the Creative AC3 Decode since I only have headphones hooked up on my computer now. It still freezes.
The most recent movie I watched froze up about 3 times (The most I remember). It was fine for about an hour, then it froze. I rebooted and about 20 mins later it froze. Again after a reboot and about 20 mins it did it again.
Windows never crashes on me during any other usage- be it surfing or typing or listening to music or even playing games. So I don't think it's hardware related (overheating, etc). I've watched feature length DivX via WMP (version 8) and it works fine.
Does anyone have any ideas? Where can I get some alernative software that I can try to use and see if its PowerDVD doing it?
Ruahrc
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10-14-2003, 05:27 PM
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#2 (permalink)
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Join Date: May 2003 Location: Columbia, Maryland
Posts: 495
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What about the rest of your computer. Cpu and speed? How much memory? Since it went away, but came back, you might have a stick of bad memory. I've learned that DVD software encoders don't work well with slow hardware or too little memory.
Robert
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10-16-2003, 08:52 PM
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#3 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 1,091
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Hardware specs should be plenty for watching DVDs. Tbird 1.333GHz with 512MB PC133. I haven't changed the memory sticks in a long time (I actually got the 2nd 256MB stick when I bought the dvd drive) so that's not the issue either.
Ruahrc
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10-17-2003, 05:42 PM
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#4 (permalink)
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Join Date: May 2003 Location: Columbia, Maryland
Posts: 495
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You got the "right stuff". Since it worked before, what changes have you made that might be causing the problem? Tough one to figure, but something you didn't have before, seems to be the culprit. Maybe a complete backup, followed by a fresh install might be the solution.
Robert
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10-17-2003, 06:05 PM
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#5 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 3,077
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I've had a similiar problem, and that was with the DVD-Rom, after the DVD-Rom was gone, no more problems anymore  | |
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10-21-2003, 05:38 PM
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#6 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 1,091
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Let me clarify the whole "going away then coming back later" issue. What happened was I used to have a separate hardware digital decoder that would handle my ac3 decoding. So all of my settings were simply on SPDIF-Out or AC3 Passthrough.
But I moved my computer recently and now it is separated from my hardware decoder. So I have to rely on either a)Creative's driver based decoding or b)PowerDVD's software decoding. Sofar from my testing- If I use either I will get lockups.
That's all that has changed, the fact that I previousl used a hardware decoder.
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10-22-2003, 10:34 AM
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#7 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 7
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I have a "similar" problem. My computer :
AMD Athlon XP 2600+
GeForce FX5600
A7N8X-X motherboard
a usual DVD-ROM player
512 MB DDR RAM
I just installed WinDVD to check out how it works. It opens the file and plays the movie, but not fluently. It's like playing a divx movie on a slow computer with not much memory in it.
I wonder if it's coz I hooked up the DVD-Rom as a slave and my HD as master. Maybe if I make 'm both masters, it might go better?
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10-22-2003, 01:13 PM
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#8 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001
Posts: 3,077
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Maybe enabling the DMA on your DVD-ROM would solve your slowdowns.
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10-25-2003, 04:40 PM
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#9 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2001 Location: Ohio (transplanted f
Posts: 2,673
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What poopeyhed2 said, and also dig around and make sure that any remnants of the old Creative hardware decoder card (drivers, etc.) are cleared out of there. I tore my hair out with the same issue when I went from a Creative hardware to software decoder.
__________________
A word to the wise is usually unneccessary.
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10-26-2003, 02:48 AM
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#10 (permalink)
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Join Date: Oct 2003
Posts: 7
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Enabling DMA actually worked. It's never enabled by default .. I enabled it and it went smoothly. Also, I downloaded a key generator for WinDVD and it seems that the "freezing" was because it was a trial.
However, the DMA enabled surely made it better. I can browse through the movie without any shivering images ..
Cheers!
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