DVD Strange Problem

[giogio]

I have a very weird problem with my DVD. All of the suden (and I mean it because the day before I just watched a movie) stopped working. Every time that I play a DVD it plays it like in slow motion, same with the sound, both are choppy. If I play a VCD it never plays it, it just keeps reading the disc. Other than that I can read CD's and DVD's and burn both. It just seems as if suddenly it is taking much longer to read information from DVD's. I seriously don't remember to have done anything to it. One day I played a movie, next day I play it and I get this problem with every single DVD I try to play. Any ideas?

Thanks.

HP Pavilion Laptop
Athlon 64
128 Video Memory
CD-DVD/Combo reader and burner.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Operating system???

 

[giogio]

Windows XP Pro.

 

[Son Goku]

Don't think VCDs would be effected by this, but is this in one media player or multiple ones? I only ask, because I have noticed that some media players do have an option to change the DVD playback rate from within the player itself. If one accidently hit that, it could play slow (depending how one changed this), but not be a hardware problem at all.

Ruling out such an (accidental?) change in the software settings itself, it could be related to the hardware possibly, or also if the system is under heavy load, it might pose a problem (depending on the specs of your machine). Did a bit of a search, and here are some suggestions

http://www.thecomputerdesk.co.uk/articles/8_3/how-to-improve-dvd-playba.shtml

They assume that the problem is the the DVD playback software isn't getting all the CPU cycles it needs. It is hard to imagine this applying with an A64 however...

 

[LeeJend]

That sounds like either the laser is dieing or the media is damaged/dirty. When the playback gets slow and choppy it usually means massive read errors. Since you have tried multiple dvd/cd's it sounds like the player, but make sure the media isn't dirty or badly scratched any way.

Check the power supply and ribbon cable connections.
Blow out the drive if you have "canned air".
Run a dvd cleaner through it if you have one.

If that doesn't work move it over to the ide cable to rule out the MB.

If it still doesn't work uninstall and reinstall the device under device manager. Unlikely to help since the DVD/CD drivers are built into windows but worth a shot.

After that try and borrow another dvd/cd player to see if that works. If it does, start shopping for a new player.

 

[giogio]

I just wanted to let you know that I solved the problem.

I found info on another webiste and it worked perfectly. One guy had another HP computer and the same problem as I. What He did is that he went to the device manager, uninstalled the secondary ide channel. Restarted the computer, and then made sure that the secondary Ide (when detected again) was set to "use DMA if avaliable".

Voala!, the playback was working perfectly again!. Why? I have no idea but it worked!.