CD player gets interrupted when printing or scanning 2

[dorkmeister]

My OS is Win2K, and whenever I'm playing music through my CDRW and then use the printer or scanner, the music gets interrupted and plays intermittently. Is this a resource conflict, and can a slightly above-average user safely change the settings? The computer is for home use, and I am the administrator. I appreciate any help.

 

[SYAR2003]

I guess that cpu resources is taken away from player causes it.

 

[dorkmeister]

I agree, but how to fix? I have dual Athlon 1.6GB processors and 1GB DDR RAM...how can there be a resource problem?

 

[SESaskDFC]

dorkmeister:

System resources are limited to the first 64kb of memory PERIOD. It doesn't matter if you have a paltry 64megs of ram or a gig of ram, all you get is 64kb of system resources.

Murray

 

[dorkmeister]

Interesting...I didn't know that. Does a CD-R/-RW use any resources when it's playing audio? I thought it was throughput only.

 

[Jontmke]

How are these devices connected? Are they all USB? It could be a USB bandwidth issue.
By the way: The "resources" restrictions mentioned above are for win9x and dos only. NT\2000\XP do not have this. This is one of the problems they were addressing when writing the NT OS.

Jon

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge. (Bertrand Russell)

 

[SYAR2003]

Perhaps increase the buffer in the player sw will help.
Jontmke is right if scanner/printer/cd are all usb as they share the same usb controller .
scanning/printing as far as i know use pretty much memory possible also ide channel for writing temp files .
So if cdrom is IDE if would be a good idea to have it on a separate ide chl than hdd.

Just some thoughts ,correct me if i'm wrong .And i'll eat my hat for dinner .

 

[dorkmeister]

i think you might be on to something. The printer is parallel and the scanner SCSI...how do I go about checking the device's IDE channel and fixing the problem?

 

[bcastner]

Bring up the Task Manager and increase the priority of the player software/process used to play the CD.

 

[dorkmeister]

The priority for WMPlayer was "normal"...should I change it to "realtime", and should I be scared by the warning of instability if i change the priority? I appreciate all the help and patience dealing with a "newbie".

 

[SYAR2003]

Try one step above normal first

Cheers SYAR

 

[dorkmeister]

I'll try it and let you know...I learn something everyday

 

[olderthandirt]

You may want to try this. Go to My computer right click and go to the Device Manager Screen. Go down the list till you come to the IDE/ATA/ATAPI controllers. Open this list and find where the CD-ROM is attached. IDE-1 or 2, then set the properties so it looks for DMA rather than PIO.

 

[dorkmeister]

thanks, but that didn't work, nor did changing the priority up a notch. i guess i should just leave it alone, since i renders aftereffects projects effortlessly. it would be nice to listen to music while i print/scan, though. after all this, it may be the plextor RW, since it's been misbehaving lately.

 

[bcastner]

It is in fact likely your hard disk drive that is the underlying issue.

You can try to defrag it, but if it is slow the printing and scanning process are both surprisingly disk intensive.