I started having problems with replaying DVDs on my PC last year. They started getting jumpier until a month or two ago they became completely unplayable, the frame rate dropped to something awful. Playing a film in a reduced window with either Media Player or the other DVD player that came with the PC (WinDVD I think) did nothing to help.
I’ll try the DVD drive in another PC back home but then a few weeks ago the PC started having the same problems playing AVI files from the harddrive. If its not the DVD player, what else could it be?
If it helps any I happened to notice that when I bring up the tasklist screen (pressing ctrl-alt-del) the CPU usage seems to be very high, 100%, when all I have open is a tasklist screen. Is this of any significance?
If this happens when you’re not playing a DVD or AVI file then you probably have a more general performance issue. Try deleting unused files, removing unused programs, removing stuff from your intray, defragmenting, etc.
A free tool I have used before which is quite useful is PC Pitstop.
I’ve defraged my harddrive overnight and removed some unplayed games and other assorted files to increase space from about 8.3 GB to 14.4 GB (the harddrive is 37 GB large) DVDs run better than before but not much.
Would adding more RAM and another, bigger harddrive do anything to help? I was considering these upgrades anyway.
I’m still interested in the 100% CPU while idle. Did you try the PC Pitstop link I mentioned above? You don’t need to create an account - click on “full PC tune-up” - then “new members” - then “test anonymously”. I have used it a few times and it’s safe.
If that hasn’t thrown anything else up you could check the “Processes” tab in Task Manager (what you called the tasklist). That will show what background processes are running when the computer is “idle”. Oftentimes these are “helper” programs like QuickTime or MSN messenger that run at startup and use up system resources. You could check if any of these are not needed and remove them.
As for RAM and disk, more RAM will almost certainly help. A bigger disk won’t necessarily give you any benefit but if it is newer it will probably be more performant. This is not something I know a lot about so hopefully someone else will chime in more authoritatively.
Yes, I meant to mention that. My Dad tried it too (its an online scan that remotely checks out your PC isn’t it?) when he was hung up on thinking a virus was causing all his PC woes. I’ll have to see first about getting the PC downstairs and hooked up to the broadband modem, I’m a bit far away from the modem as it is.
Significant? This is most likely directly responsible.
See the processes tab, sort by descending “CPU”, and tell us what’s the process that’s hogging your CPU. (The normal state is to have “System Idle Process” up there.)
Assuming it isn’t some important Windows process, you should be able to kill the process, (right-click > End process) and carry on watching your videos.
In general, I recommend googling for any process name that you are unfamiliar with. And check out results from sites like liutilities.com or processlibrary.com and similar. These sites maintain lists of common process names and tell you if they are malicious.
If you do this often enough, you’ll start to remember the names of legit processes, and you’ll be able to quickly spot suspicious names in your parents’/friends’ PCs.
Good stuff. Just be aware that the programmes in the Task Manager will reappear on reboot unless you either uninstall them entirely or remove them from the Startup folder.
