Full Screen Video Problem

[garroadran]

Well, I'm not sure what forum this belongs in, but I'm trying here.

I'm running windows XP, 256bm ddram, and trying to play a some video files. 100-200mb in size, .avi divx stuff. I'm using windows media player.

Everything was working fine for the first couple of days, but today, halfway through the episode I was watching the video starts slowing down and pretty much stops playing, while the audio continues on. As soon as I go off full screen it works fine again.

What really puzzles me is that this just started out of the blue... no other programs are running on the computer. Tried rebooting, that didn't do it. Any suggestions?

 

[gcunning]

I've seen somewhat similar problems with a messed up version of Windows media player. I would try re-installing, or upgrading to a new version via windowsupdate.

 

[cdogg]

In addition, try disabling the system restore function which runs silently in the background not displayed in your task manager:

1. Click Start.
2. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
3. Click the System Restore tab.
4. Select "Turn off System Restore" or "Turn off System Restore on all drives"
5. Click Apply.
6. This will delete all existing restore points. Click Yes to do this.
7. Click OK.


Note: It is NOT recommended that you leave the System Restore utility permanently disabled.


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[ShadowWalker11]

DO NOT LISTEN TO THE INDIVIDUAL TELLING YOU TO DELETE YOUR SYSTEM RESTORE POINTS AS A WAY TO FIX A VIDEO ISSUE !!!
(bangs head into keyboard repeatedly.........
in order to play avi divx files you had to force an older codec to be used - i know this because i did it myself.
perhaps the source of the download of that codec offered a corrupted version of it.
or maybe your download of it just got bonked somewhere in the datastream.
look for other sources to download this codec from, upgrade to windows media player 9 and try again.
I personally never experienced the problem you are having with the avi divx codec.

 

[cdogg]

ShadowWalker11
You're still new here, but perhaps you can show a little more courtesy in the forums.

First of all, it's definitely not a codec issue. A codec generates the video stream into a buffer before you even see the first frame of video on the screen. If the person's codec was corrupted, missing, or simply not the right one, the user would not even see a second of video.

Secondly, my advice may have seemed a bit destructive, but it's really not. garroadran did mention that "no other programs are running on the computer", which would indicate that it's not a conflict with any other apps. And since it worked before, disabling the "System Restore" feature would eliminate another possibility that a process is slowing down the PC. As we all know, the System Restore function can kick in every so often, which might explain why the video would work fine for a while before having problems halfway through his flick.

The only other possibility I can think of which I didn't mention before is that his system could be overheating.

The biggest thing you missed was the last line in my post:
"[blue]Note: It is NOT recommended that you leave the System Restore utility permanently disabled[/blue]"


~cdogg
[tab]"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources"
[tab][tab]- A. Einstein

 

[cdogg]

Oh yeah and one more thing...

This thread is over a month old with no reply from the user!

 

[garroadran]

Hey guys, for some reason yahoo just sent 5 notification emails to my inbox saying that this thread had been posted to... so yeah, I had no clue people had actually replied to this.

Thanks for the suggestions, I don't think it's windows media player, since the same thing is happening with Winamp now as well.

Since I first posted this, I've upgraded to winXP Pro, and now anything except 100% size gives me an extremely slow and choppy playback.

In any case, I think you guys have invested too much time in my little problem anyway, I'm probably not giving you enough information to solve this anyway. I'll give the system restore thing a try though.

Thanks again.