C90s problem with audio/video playback

Helo, I'm new here, and I'm also have limited knowledge about computing, so my concerns and questions might be dumb:
Recently my laptop got a little buggy - e.g. when it plays any audio or video material, once in a while I notice that a video or audio playback distorts (now it's become really anoying) - gaps appear in the sound or video starts to lag, and a minute later everything goes back to normal - as if my laptop was on extreme workload, where all CPU and other resources were used up, but that's not the thing, this happens on iddle run. And this problem appeared also without any change in the system, I didn't do anything to my laptop a long time before this happened:/, so I don't know where to start looking for the problem. Maybe someone can help me or at least suggest anything? I also noticed that during that "problem", the whole laptop gets slower, but all the readings from CPU and RAM are fine..
Thanks in advance:]

 

I would first try run 3Dmark06 to see if the video card still perform the same.

Not sure what type of video you try to play and the player, check the decoder maybe the decoder is corrupted, I have the same issue when playing mepg4 videos it plays laggy and distortion at first, I had rewind the video back to few seconds back in order for the video to play smooth.

 

To make sure you could also check the list of processes using Task Manager, and see if there is any process different from the media player / decoder, whose CPU usage spikes abnormally high when the lags happen.

 

Also, make sure your virus checker is up to date.

 

Oh yes, malware can cause lagging.

 

first, try to isolate if its hardware or software. Try using different software players ( VLC ? Windows media player, quicktime etc ) Does this happen on all players ? Or is it isolated to a certain media player ? If its only on a certain player, its probably just a software issue and decoders. Try to update ur media player.

 

Could be your registry is clogged up. Use ccleaner to clean your laptop up its a great little program

 

Could decoders get corrupted by themselves? Because they worked normal until now, my codecs are from k-lite codec pack, not very old, I use MPC for all my videos and Winamp for music, audio playback was also normal until now, and as I said before, I don't remember anything, that could have been done or changed in my laptop, that caused this.
My laptop is clean, antivirus is up-to-date, I'll run 3dmark to check, also will try to monitor the task manager.

Dumb question: how can registry affect playback? And is this safe to delete something from the registry, especially when you are not sure what uoi are doing?
I think that if nothing will work or tell what's the problem, I'll probably do full system restore..This would get everything back to fresh start, back to normal, right? Maybe it's too early for a system restore...

 

If you want to take things right back effectively, then you would probably wanto to re-format and re-install your OS from scratch.

Ccleaner is very easy to use and it won't harm your computer, it will clean everything from cookies and other rubbish collected by your machine and also will clean any invalid (usually empty) old registry files that just clog up and slow your machine.

Give it a try followed by a defrag then a checkdisk before restoring or re-installing though also follow pogitz's ideas to work out which program gives you trouble so you can narrow down what drivers and codecs you need to re-install

 

I've just run 3dmark vantage and the results differ a little:
GPU score is 1025 (some time ago it was 1041, so 16 points are lost)
CPU score is 9792 (some time ago it was 10441, so 649 points are lost)
Overall score is 1320 (some time ago it was 1344, so 24 points are lost)
Does this say anything about my system? (Difference in CPU score is quite disturbing:/). Now I'm defragmenting, then I'll set a restore point and try to run CCleaner...

 

Codecs and other software can be corrupted seemingly without any change -- for instance by unexpected influences from other application installs, or just by a bug that gets activated by some rare state of the program during playing a movie, for instance. OSes are so complex nowadays that many times strange and baffling faults do occur.

You could definitely try a reinstallation of the media player and codec pack.

The GPU and overall score can easily be random deviation. While the CPU score difference is larger it's still under 10%, so it could still be random deviation. (I may be wrong about this, not sure how random the 3DMark scores are)

But yes, over time, Windows systems tend to get clogged up and they need some maintenance. If by any chance you are running XP, have a look at my XP guide, there are some maintenance steps listed there.

Also don't forget to check the other suggestions (different media player etc.)

 

I am using Vista Codec package, it's the same as K-lite, sometimes it cause a lot conflicts, try go to the K-like program folders and click Remove Conflicts.

Also go to Video Decoder Configuration and check Deinterlacing and set the method to Linear Blending.

And if you are having problem with H.264 or Mpeg4, this is what I did to fix it, I download the trial version of PowerDVD Ultra just to get the their codec, and then go to L-lite codec's video configuration and disable H.264/AVC, this solve the playback problem for me, the codec from K-lite and Vista codec package just doesn't work as good as CyberLink's.

 

A simpler solution would be to just use VLC and forget about all the codecs. For basic (AVI + video DVD) movie needs such as mine, this works just fine.

 

Yes, Vista Codec package and K-lite are just too complicated to tweak all the settings for all codecs, and it cause so many conflicts in Windows Movie Maker, I never able to get all codecs to play smooth.

 

Thanks very much for your rich replies, now I at least know where to begin with solving this problem:] After cleaning up the computer with CCleaner, and played a movie, nothing bad happened, but I'm still not sure, this laptop is always as tricky as hell and sometimes surprises me in some negative way:] I'll keep trying your suggestions, till I'm sure:] Thanks again. I hope this problem is (or soon will be) over.