media player messing up

[doberman_52]

I have a PIII 600MHz system with 768 meg of ram. If I open a few programs with media player I usually have no problem. But if I open one to many programs with media player running, it starts to not work right. It will basically stop playing, but make a sound every 20 seconds or so for less than a tenth a second or so, like a glitch type deal. what could cause something like this?

[Oz]

Using all your RAM and starting to page to the hard disk. Does the hard disk light up at the same time?

Try closing anything you don't need.

[doberman_52]

I dont know if the HDD light turns on because I have an Xblade case, and the prongs dont fit my mobo right. I highly doubt that I am using all my ram. I have taken every thing that I dont need off of startup. I can run just these, MSN Messenger, Firefox, solitaire, and be fine, but if I run another program, it will usually start failing. Task manager says PF Usage is about 276 - 322 MB. I can close all other programs, and it still wont work. It actually wont play any sound, so its not just media player. Could it possibly be sound card drivers? Its an Aureal Vortex 8810 audio card, and XP has its own drivers for it.

Edit: Sometimes the HDD will also freeze for about 5 - 10 seconds too.

[jtvyper456]

A few things you can do:
1. Check your paging file, make sure it is set to 'System Managed', this is the most effective setting if you have a decent sized HD.
2. Turn off & disable System Restore Service. It uses a high amount of your CPU and memory and is basically useless unless you create a restore point every 2 seconds.
3. Turn off & disable the Messenger Service. Again, useless, it tries to transmit info between computers, and makes you open to receive trojans etc.
4. If you have no printer, turn off & disable the Print Spooling Service, it eats up your CPU and Memory also, there's a bug with this service that Microsoft tries to address with an update (KB896423), but the update failes to completely fix the memory leaking problem.
5. Turn off and disable the Windows Themes service, once again eats up entirely too much memory.
6. A few other services that can be disabled that are rendered useless: Remote Registry, Secondary Logon<-(if you're the only user on the computer), and Security Center (given that you know enough to have anti-virus, firewall, and whatever about the auto-updates).

[doberman_52]

How do I do all those?

Edit: 120 gig HDD, no printers, I use msn messenger - a lot, this PC is pretty well maxed out.
spooling is allready disabled.

[Oz]

When you have all the programs open and videos run slowly and you open Task Manager, what does it say in Commit Charge?

How fast is your RAM? I would guess fairly slow by the age of the machine.

I still think it's the page file. Why not disable it to test? If you get any errors about being out of memory when you open the videos, then it is the page file.

It's not your sound drivers.

[doberman_52]

Its for songs that I am wanting to play, not movies. I played a clip and movies run fine, but with out sound. I can close everything else and still get nothing. It also happens with vids and songs online, leading me to think that it isn't media player. It is all sounds.

Commit Charge (K)
Total 336472 ------changes a lot
Limit 1923324
Peak 425920


How do I disable the Page File?

Edit: RAM is pc 100 or pc 133 mhz, not completly sure.

[Oz]

Are those figures you posted when it was having the problem with playback?

[doberman_52]

Right as this moment I cannot play any sounds. I dont have Media Player opened though.

With Media Player opened:
Commit Charge (K)
Total 377960 --changes
Limit 1923324
Peak 425920

How do I diasble the page file?

[Oz]

What do you mean you can't play any sounds, and you don't have media player open?

Is your computer exhibiting the same behaviour as in your first post, or not?

Are you sound drivers installed and working correctly in other applications, and in Windows itself?

[doberman_52]

Every thing is the same as the first post, just that i forgot that i cant play anything online, any songs on sites, etc. No sound what so ever. I can turn th PC on and it all plays normally, but when I open to many programs, the sound just stops playing completly. No media player, nothing online, no sound period. it has worked fine for the past 6 months on this setup. I added a stick of ram about 6 months ago, to 3 256mb sticks of pc 100 or pc 133 ram, all are the same. I disabled the page file and it seems to run a lot slower now than it did before. I have minimized the startup prorams to just windows live messenger, and a program for my video card (radeon 9250 128mb vid.) its a driver/bios updater I think. I just restarted my PC, and I have firefox, windows live (MSN), and windows media player open. I was just getting sound, until I just opened limewire. Then it cuts out, and i hear a very short sound, a glith as you might call it, every once in a while.

Edit: Page file didn't get disabled for some reason.

[Oz]

Next time the sound cuts out like that, post what your CPU usage is like from task manager.

[doberman_52]

I opened Limewire, cpu spike to 100% the whole time it takes to open it. After it is done loadingit goes back down to ten and moves around from tenish to 30ish.

[doberman_52]

I was watching the CPU usage earlier, and I had noticed that it spikes every once in a while for no apparent reason.

[Gohan Ryu]

Run Defrag on your hard drive(s) where your media is stored. Also run CHKDSK with the /f switch to fix any errors it may find.

check here for some ideas...
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/925703/en-us