Video is crashing my computer!

[Idlehands211]

Everytime I play a video file from my harddrive it freezes the computer, without fail. It freezes other times as well, but religiously when tryin to play video files. My computer is home built with a generic hard drive (possible problem?), 1300 AMD Duron processor, 256 SDRam, 64 MB Radeon 7000 video card, 40 GB Western Digital harddrive, Soundblaster Live 5.1 Audio Card. The system properties also reports that there are two monitors, which there are not. I tried deleting the monitor that isn't the one connected, but it says windows has found new hardware upon boot up. Please help, it took me 3 weeks just to get this thing running.

 

[libertytech]

does your radeon card contain a video out, either an s-video or rca plug? if this is the case, and you DO have a tv connected at the same time, your computer may treat this as mulitple monitors. if your monitor is set to 800x600 you will not notice this being the case. however, if your monitor is set to a higher resolution, it will boot to 800x600 anyway. a tell-tale sign. to fix this problem, try downloading the newest drivers from

http://www.ati.com,

they update their drivers often. you will have to uninstall your old vid driver first before you install the new one.

once installed, go to your display properties, go to settings, an click the advanced button. this will bring up the driver specific properties. from there click on the display button (i think). the display tab will allow you to change the tv and monitor settings.

as far as your video freezing your computer, perhaps a different video player will work. It sounds as though your "two monitors" have no bearing on this.

let me just say i don't like using windows media player (wmp) to play any of my video files. it is much too big a program and eats resources. i am partial to a very small media player called sasami 2000. it is free and on

http://www.sasami2k.com.

i would next try getting the newest codecs for video playing. the latest divx codec is free and on

http://www.divx.com.

there is also a file floating around the net called "nimo codec pack 5.exe" (a self-extracting zip). This codec pack contains every imaginable codec you would or could ever need for playing and manipulating video and audio.

hope this helps, and please let me know if something i've suggested is wrong, so i can learn too!

 

[jared5494]

could be a variety of things!

1) POWER! is your motherboard and ur power supply compatible?

2)latest drivers on ur video card could also be a problem.

3)latest direct x drivers.

http://www.microsoft.com/directx

should be like 8.2 (dont do the 9.0 beta)

4)any overclocking? if so...turn the beast down a lil.

it really sounds like a power problem since other times it freezes or ur overclocking.

hope i helped,
-jared w