Performance of DVD can be poor - why is that?

great unwashed

Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-K17A (Toshiba Equium laptop)

This is the offending article above. Often while watching a DVD when I raise the on-screen controls like the volume the performance of the DVD reduces dramatically as if the memory or processor of my computer is overloaded or something and the picture goes into spasms for a few minutes before it settles down. It happens particularly when I use FN and the volume key on the keyboard.

Is it the amount of RAM I have (1GB)? Or the processor speed (celeron1.6ghz) or the interference of Vista in the background? It's a low-spec laptop but a no-spec dvd player from lidl would not perform like that.

It's annoyingly disappointing and not the end of the world but I'd rather avoid it in future. Any advice or help?

Sqaull20

Stupid question I know,but is it plugged in?

Raising the volume,colour settings etc can take big strain on the battery

Potential-Monke

Plus you're using Vista...

I hate vista, it's already using up about 600mb of your RAM by just being there!

Stupid Vista...

auggie2k

Try disabling the Aero Theme (eats the computer up) and that should help.

great unwashed

Plugged in, yep. Cannot find the 'Aero' theme..(control panel, appearance, desktop?..?)

The RAM system monitor on my desktop shows 47% full of vista without anything else running (that I'm aware of). I've disabled as many programs as I know how and I might go back and disable more stuff. In my adapter card under the advanced monitor settings it shows 'system video memory' as 32MB and 'Total Available Graphics Memory' as 224MB. That means I guess that my graphics card has only 32M memory and swap memory of the other number. Could that be the problem? Too little graphics memory? I'll avoid this like the plague in future if it is.

Splitting the hard drive and installing linux might be an idea if vista needs such an amount of RAM. Anyone know of a good sticky on partitioning the drive please let me know.

PogMoThoin

A new feature in Vista Disk Managment is that it can now shrink itself to create unpartioned space. Ubuntu (if thats the distro u goin 2 use) can automatically install in the largest unpartioned space. You can also use gparted (partioning tool in linux) from a Ubuntu live CD, its fairly straight forward & looks like Disk Managment in Windows. Just remember to leave the unpartioned space as unpartioned space, ie do not format it, install will be easier this way.

If you're anyway like me, you'll always boot to linux & dread booting to Vista to face all the AV scans & bad performance.

Good luck

Pog

great unwashed

Pog,

I just today downloaded and installed ubuntu and am writing this message now on Mozilla! I got a dual-boot system now so I can test out my DVD player under ubuntu. But that's for later...

As I was browsing through boards earlier for info on installing ubuntu, I came across the thread about the wireless modems... yours is/was atheros too, no? I'm only connected now via wire but I'd like to ask you if you got the wifi working? I remember trying to get a winmodem working 7 years ago and now I'm bald from the hair-tearing out during that episode. Is it possible to get it up and running easily , the wifi?

PogMoThoin

Ya, I had loads of trouble getting my Atheros working, problem being that it was identified by Ubuntu as an Atheros AR5006EG, but vista identified it as AR5007EG which was correct. Tried installing the latest madwifi, but it didn't work.

I had to use ndisgtk & ndiswapper & use a windows driver. It works now but only for WEP, no WPA. Follow this guide. I did things a little different by using ndisgtk to install the driver.

This is what you do:

get ndisgtk

sudo aptitude install ndisgtk

get driver:

wget http://blakecmartin.googlepages.com/ar5007eg-32-0.2.tar.gz

extract the driver on your desktop

blacklist the ath_pci driver, it does not work. Also in restrictd driver manager disable the Hal driver.

echo "blacklist ath_pci" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

then we install the driver in a gui,

sudo ndisgtk

show it the windows inf in the driver folder.

then make sure ndiswapper loads everytime we boot up

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
echo "ndiswrapper" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

then restart.

Good luck

Pog

great unwashed

Nearly a week later but finally got my DVD player working under ubuntu. I have no problems like in vista - changing the volume doesn't end up with annoying and unprofessional stalled slow motion frames for a minute or two - sometimes more. Imagine what a little bit of rewinding would do...The performance under ubuntu on the other hand is superb...swooon

Took a week but well worth it. Going to get my wireless working now and it could be bye-bye to Redmond for good (OpenOffice even opens XP .doc files from work, and pps. too! bye bye Word you gave me too little too late)

PogMoThoin

You only truly find out how powerful your pc is when ya run linux. Fcuk m$ & their resourse hogging Vista.

Glad all worked out for ya

Good luck gettin your wifi workin, its the only thng i found problematic with linux, but there are loads of guides out there to fix it.

Pog

great unwashed

Pog just browsing for an answer to another Vista question for a friend and saw this and one of your other threads (where you're running 3 OSes at once..!!) and would like to wish you a belated happy christmas and happy new year - your own guide above worked great for me (got it going over 3 weeks ago) though dishwasher or wrapper crashes regularly but there's also madwifi out there I hear which I'll go for later - the ubuntu community is great actually - Xeth has offered to help me install madwifi when I get around to it.

Haven't been using Vista since (and 7.10 gutsy opens .docs .xls .ppt the works! - cheeky..)

So there. I'll be back to you for more help when I want to get that madness of running the 3 OSes at once going.

Have a good year

James