[nickedoff]

Hi!

Recently, whenever I try to play a DVD with my laptop, the sound is very strange; it pops, gets a little slow in some spots, and sometimes sounds a little robotic, if you know what I mean. The video is occasionally a little slow, too, like it's trying to read the DVD but it's not able to fast enough.

This only happens with DVD's; none of my .AVI or .MPG movies have this issue, nor do any of my saved music files, so I know it can't be my sound card/video card.

Like I said, this only recently started happening - I've been using my laptop as a DVD player for a while - so it might have something to do with a Windows update...? I really don't know.

If you need any hardware specs, tell me where I can find them and I'll provide.

Thanks,

Nick


Some notes:

I'm using Windows XP and have tried playing the DVD's in two different programs - the default Windows Media Player and GOMPlayer (which is actually a very nice program). It seems that WMP shows this issue a lot more frequently than GOMP. My DVD drive, according to Device Manager, is "SONY DVD RW DW-Q58A". Like I said, tell me if you need anything else.

[nickedoff]

Oh!

It turns out that the problem is with playing music CD's, too. The audio pops, sounds a little robotic and sort of lags.

My DVD drive, according to Device Manager, is "SONY DVD RW DW-Q58A"

It turns out that that's the drive I burn with, not the one that reads DVDs/CDs.
If you need to know the name of the one that reads, I can provide it.

[nickedoff]

Bump I guess.

[xWilDx]

sounds like your computers resources are fully used, try checking task manager see whats happening, it could just be what you said in the first place.

[nickedoff]

sounds like your computers resources are fully used, try checking task manager see whats happening, it could just be what you said in the first place.

Thank you for the reply!

I'll try closing everything that I don't need running and then playing a DVD. I'll let you know if that works.

[nickedoff]

Well, I killed every process that I could without making my system instable, and the problem persisted. :\

I even tested your theory out by running some CPU intensive processes and it didn't make a difference.

Any more ideas?

[Ben_neB]

I'd say it's a problem with the drive itself. You said you have two different drives? Have you tried playing DVDs or CDs in the other drive to see if the problem still happens?

[nickedoff]

I'd say it's a problem with the drive itself. You said you have two different drives? Have you tried playing DVDs or CDs in the other drive to see if the problem still happens?

There's only one drive that I can insert a CD with. Sorry if I confused you. =)

Does this sound like a dirty lens issue?

[xWilDx]

try a restore to the last time u can remember it working properly
, if not then a faulty lens could be the fault

[nickedoff]

The thing is, I don't remember the last time it was working properly. I haven't used it to play DVD's within the last month (our DVD player junked out only a little while ago).

In order to test if the lens is at fault, how can I clean it? I've heard that alcohol and a cotton swab is both a good idea and a bad idea...should I try it?

What other software issues could there be? I use Alcohol 120% - could this have somehow changed my drive speed?