HD Videos Choppy on ENVY 14

I purchased my Envy 14 from HP this May and have viewed HD videos on it fine on Gom and VLC media players for the past 6 months. However, in the past month, the videos started getting choppy and it stops for a second several times throughout the video - video and audio included.

I have been defragmenting and optimizing with smart defrag and cleaning out the registry and optimizing with CCleaner and have been doing virus scans through windows security essentials and malwarebytes on my laptop once a week and have been fine.

Out of my 568 gb hdd, 214 is still free and I dont have that many large programs installed other than photoshop, illustrator and itunes.

All my HD videos played fine without any trouble till a month ago but now it's always choppy no matter what media player i use. I tried installing CoreAVC codec as well but it has not helped that much. When it plays HD videos, my CPU uses no more than 20% but it is still choppy.

My graphics card is up to date, and I have been doing all the HP updates by HP support assistant. What could be wrong?

I'd really like to view HD videos smoothly on my ENVY 14 again Please help!

Here is my computer specs:

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel i5 Core Processor 2.67GHz M580
4 gig ram
Intel HD Graphics/ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
Driver Version 8.771.1.0


Is it my laptop that is slowing down? I really doubt it.. I have been keeping this laptop in tiptop shape in terms of maintaining. I tried different codecs but they don't seem to be working. Why can't my computer play these HD videos smoothly as it used to?? :/

 

Is your computer on Balanced mode? Also, is Aero enabled or disabled?

 

Does it do it on both the Intel and ATI video cards?
Try monitoring your CPU temps because maybe your CPU is throttling.

 

Namaki, No it is on high performance mode.

Mike415, I tried it on both video cards but it has the same problem.

BTW, I JUST did another Windows Experience Index Test and my graphics and gaming graphics performance went up from 6.6 on both to 6.7. It actually got better and faster than the last time i tested this several months ago.. :/ Nothing else changed so it means my computer is in tip top shape no?? :/ Not sure what the problem is.

Could it be a faulty or dying video/graphics card??
Sometimes when I play music or videos it stops and just repeats the last half second or the song or video like 5-10 times before it goes again - this happening maybe once an hour on any media whether it may be mp3, youtube, low and high quality videos.

 

Koralex90: I have the same issue when playing vidoes. At first, my Envy 14 played VLC movies just fine and then after 3 months I started getting issues. Sometimes there is a lag, and images freeze, but then jumps back to speed. It's annoying for sure, but usually it goes away in the first minute. I assume this is video card issue, but don't know how to fix it. I'd love to here how people solve this one.

 

It seems like we can rule out the video card if it does it on both.

And you are sure the files are not corrupted or somehow botched which causes this right? ie. playing it on another computer or replaying it at the same spot has a different result.

Every type of file? AVI, MKV, MPEG, WMV, MOV, Flash...?

Is your HDD maybe failing?

 

I'm sure my files are not corrupted. I have been playing the same music video files for months and they did not have a problem before. Yes, every type of file - avi, mkv, mpg, and wmv have lagged like tpe450 said.

Hmm HDD? I hope not! >___<!! I BETTER back up my computer ASAP!

 

Its kind of a shot in the dark and a cliche fix, but try turning WiFi off, booting into safe mode, uninstalling and deleting ATI/Intel video drivers in device manager, rebooting into regular Windows, uninstall ATI software, and then reinstalling the stock HP Video Drivers.

Stock Drivers
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp50501-51000/sp50656.exe

 

Will doing this take away the ability to switch between the drivers every time i plug in or unplug my computer?

 

Not if you install the drivers linked above first. It will install both the ATI and Intel display drivers.

 

my envy is HP ENVY 14t-1200 CTO Notebook PC. I dont see this driver file under the HP support and driver page. Is this file compatible with all ENVY 14s?

 

i talked to HP and they said its either corrupt windows files or video card. they told me to restore my computer to factory defaults. does what they say have any truth?

 

First gen's which you seem to have.

Ive used it numerous times on my computer.

 

koralex90: Did you reset to factory settings? I really don't want to have to do that, and reinstall everything, but if it fixes the issue we have...then...

 

Hi Koralex90,

Did completing the restore correct the issue?

"The views expressed in my contributions are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views and strategy of HP"

 

It could be the harddrive. try this test. try play the HD video while copying a large file on the laptop.

 

Well, I did a system restore but the problem happened again after I started reinstalling some programs like Adobe Design Premium and other programs.

Pissed, I did a minimum image recovery and I decided not to install any big programs like Design Premium but even with that, some videos are starting the stutter again little by little.

When I am downloading a video on torrent or transferring large files, it stutters ALOT more.

Does that mean it is a hard drive problem?

 

if it was the harddrive it should of played normally during the large file transfer. if you have a spare harddrive around try it with a clean install of windows.

 

try running cinebench 11.5 and see if your scores are similar to those to your chip on the site

3D Fluff Maxon Cinebench 11.5 Score Results


maybe this will eliminate whether there is something strange going on with your cpu speeds. This sounds bizarre though.

 

Hey all, so I sent my laptop to HP and they said it was a hard drive problem so they gave me a new hard drive but the problem for the videos persists.. What should I do now??

 

HP gave me a new toshiba hdd with a clean install of windows and so i tried playing some music videos from my hard drive with windows media player while transferring files from an external hard drive to my laptop and it stuttered just like before..what could be causing this? HP said it was the HDD but that did not seem to have solved the problem completely.. :/

 

This made me curious as to whether my Envy 14 is suffering from the same. I decided to load a movie which was working fine a few months back, but now I'm getting exactly what you describe - second intervals in the movie where the audio and video will lag.

Out of curiosity, is anyone else getting the laggy/distorted windows boot sound every time they start up their computer? Wondering if this is related. Hopefully there is a fix out there...