Playing MP3's a huge drain on system

[damian5000]

I've got a 2gh Dell Latitude D610 with 1.5gb of RAM.

When I play MP3's, my computer intermittently (and repeatedly) runs the hard drive solid to the point that the whole computer locks up, the song stutters and the computer freezes for various amounts of seconds.

Sometimes it runs fine but then random seconds later the hard drive will start to run again constantly for 30 seconds...I have no idea what it's doing. This also happens when I'm not doing anything else except for playing MP3's.

I've tried several different audio applications and it all produces the same result.

It's actually quite embarrassing when I put on a set and go to sit down with some friends and the music is stuttering all over the place.

I can play KOTOR with a move running in the background and my browser open with 15 tabs open, but can't play an MP3 without the computer "locking" up.


Any help greatly appreciated.

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

What version of Windows? Among the ones you tried, did you try WinAmp? Try the free version and see if that helps.

Also, can you check in your Device Manager and see what UDMA mode your hard drive is running in?

Right-click "My Computer", choose Properties, Hardware tab, "Device Manager", "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers" (hit the + sign), double-click on "Primary IDE Channel", "Advanced Settings" tab and see what it says for Device 0. If it says PIO mode try changing it via the drop down to DMA if available. If it already says DMA try changing it to PIO and then reboot and then change it back to DMA and reboot again and see if that helps.

My brother's Latitude recently had a problem where his hard drive was running in PIO mode instead of UDMA and I was able to correct it somehow.

 

[falconguard]

If this is Vista, try disabling all sound enhancements, on the player and the sound card. For some reason Vista has problems with DSP's in the kernel itself.

 

[gonaads]

Are these mp3 files downloaded files? Check their file size make sure that they aren't carrying something else within them. Even if you were in PIO mode you should still be able to play an mp3. Make sure about these mp3 files. If they are legit or from a know good source then it could be a problem with the player. Do you have any other music file formats besides MP3, such as ogg, m4a, wma, etc...? If so try to play one of those and see if you have the same problem.

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Or how about a codec-less media player like VLC - VideoLAN?

 

[damian5000]

Roiwra - Somehow the mode had gotten switched to PIO! I uninstalled the driver and restarted and everything works great now. Files were taking forever to copy and windows was starting very slowly also, this fixed everything! Thanks

 

[roirraW "edor" ehT]

Hooah! You're very welcome. Sorry took so long to respond, been working on too many other people's computers, plus reinstalling mine. Haven't been keeping up with the exactly two forums I normally do.

Glad that fixed it.