D630: Windows Media Player crashes system

I have a D630 with XP Home, 2GB ram and a NVIDIA video card.

Lately if I power up this machine and play something in Windows Media Player, the system crashes. The whole screen goes squiggily and out of focus.

Any ideas?

Seems to only happen with WMP...so far.

Thanks.

 

Have you tried updating your display driver? Can you play the file using another player?

 

Files play fine with other players. I'll try a driver update.

Wasn't there a NVIDIA problem with this model? Wonder if this is related?

Thanks.

 

Yeah, there was/is and it definitely could be related. It makes particularly think such when you say "the whole screen goes squiggly and out of focus".

 

That thought crossed my mind too, but if it only happens with one player and if it stops when he stops playing the file, I don't think it's the GPU.

 

Do other files play normally in WMP? Maybe you need to update your codecs.

What version of WMP are you using? Perhaps you can upgrade/update it.

 

Today it crashed while using another video player. So I updated the BIOS and NVIDIA driver from Dell. We'll see.

By crash I mean it locks up and goes squiggly and blurry.

The files I'm playing are large AVI's captured from my camcorder.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like you'll need to get the motherboard replaced. When playing video, the GPU will heat up, and if it's already been damaged from excessive heat in the past, strange things will happen. Your D630 should still be in warranty, the motherboard's warranty was extended for another year due to this issue.

 

Maybe try a video game or 3D marks or something to stress the video card and see if it crashes. Just to make sure its the video card that is the problem.