Sony VAIO PCG VGN-AX580G stuttering problems.

My laptop has some kind of weird stuttering problem that is kind of hard to explain. The video will stop, sometimes for a split second or so, and the sound will continue and then the video plays at increased speed until it catches up to the sound. Sometimes it will do this consistently after each minute or so a couple of times or it might actually play fine for a long while before it will do it again. It doesn't just do this in AVI files either. Sometimes it will do it while I am playing games. It also depends on the game too. For instance, it will sometimes do it in Doom 3 and Crysis, but does not do it in other games at all like Quake 3 Arena. I am unable to pinpoint this problem as I have tried many, many different things in the process of trying to troubleshoot this issue. Even my web browser will have short momentary pauses, although seldom, while scrolling even after the web page had LONG been finished loading.

What I have tried:

Many different video drivers

Different media players for the avi files (WMP9, WMP11, Media Player Classic, PowerDVD)

Used different sound cards (Audigy 2 ZS Notebook, USB Turtle Beach Roadie)

Different Codecs for avi files (FFDShow, DivX)

Different OS (XP Pro, Vista Ultimate)

Disabling cpu throttling with powercfg /x schemename /processor-throttle-ac none (in case cpu power saving feature may have been responsible)

I have even tried improved cooling methods by adding some of those sponges specifically designed for laptop heat sinks with heat pipes. I also wonder if these sponges have a particular name for them.

I was wondering if somebody else has had this problem or if there is already a thread on this topic somewhere.

My laptop specifications are:

Pentium M 760 @ 2.0 GHz
2GB DDR2 800 MHz (2x 1GB Modules) running @ 533 MHz
ATi mobility Radeon x700 with 256MB VRAM
Toshiba 80GB SATA HDD
Western Digital 250GB SATA HDD
Sony DVD-RW DW-Q58A (Claims to be connected as USB)
Silicon Image SiI 3112 SATA Controller
Intel Azalia HD Audio controller to Realtek audio device (unknown rtl chip)
SB Audigy 2 ZS Notebook Audio (Currently using as primary audio device)
Intel i915pm chipset
Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG
Marvell Yukon Gigabit Ethernet Controller
17" LCD @ 1440x900 Res

 

I have been trying to solve this problem for some time now and still haven't completely figured it out.

I recently have tried new things to pinpoint the issue.

I have ran Linux Ubuntu straight from the disc (ver 8.10) and let the Totem player install codec updates automatically. There was not a single problem playing videos in Ubuntu and the only driver I believe was missing was my video driver, but I know as much as my video card is not the issue with the related problem. I am not sure what was different with Ubuntu that it worked flawlessly where Windows (XP or Vista) has had problems. I even tried updating that 'Sony Notebook Control Device' driver. It would seem to have reduced the hesitations from happening, but it does still happen from time to time.

I was hoping somebody could give me some suggestions. Even if the suggestion is to throw out this laptop and get a newer one. I do hope I can resolve this though eventually.

ANY feedback will be greatly appreciated!

 

This may sound like a really stupid reply given everything you have already tried but have you set your power profile to max performance instead of balanced or power saver?

 

Well, I usually manually set my power settings, but I could try that again.

I have even used the command:

Powercfg /x Never /processor-throttle-ac none

so that my processor is always clocked at 2GHz. This worked for Unreal Tournament as UT will not detect processors correctly because of this power saving feature, but that was a different issue altogether anyway which I was already aware of at that.

I have also disabled 'Powerplay' in the ATi control panel too. I always do this anyway.

Otherwise, yes, I do have it set to 'Minimal power savings' in my power management which is similar to the 'Max performance' setting you have described which is labeled that in Vista. I am using Windows XP Pro btw.

Thank you for the reply, too. I do appreciate it.

 

Not a lot more i can really think of tbh, you could try disabling CCC completely as this sometimes causes issue with video playback specifically the automatic deanelise setting in vivio or whatever its called, this shouldn't cause issues in games or web browsing though, have you tried keeping the task manager up and seeing if any of the processes jump up to 100% while you are browsing watching videos etc?

Something like this might also help to monitor the history though ive never personally tried it. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

Well, I'll let you in on a secret. I hate the CCC and have always avoided installing it like the plague.

I actually stick with the old ATi Control Panel and I also use it in combination with the Ray Adam's ATi Tray Tools which is very nice and doesn't even take a whole second to get to my settings with it.

That is a good point you make there, too. CCC takes up a lot of memory and doesn't really support any more features than the basic utilities do. It's just a memory hog and to change anything with it you have to wait about 2 min. just to get into the thing. You could still be very right about the CCC thing though as I haven't used it to experience anything with it.

 

Just to rule it out more then anything, just seems odd the whole PC is basically locking for a second or so hence why i suggested checking to see if anything is hitting 100% cpu usage for a split second.

 

Not a bad suggestion. I have looked at this before too, but I will keep a closer eye on it this time and let you know what I come up with. I'll even try to decipher which process it is if and when it does it again.

 

Just had a quick play about with that program i linked and its actually bloody good lol, if you set the view>selectcolums>process performance to CPU history as well it keeps a small record of what is being used so you can see + it runs off a single exe file so no install required.

 

Ooh! Do share!

I played with the task manager that comes with XP, but I didn't see these mentioned features in there. I have other programs too I can use like Everest and a System Monitor program, too.

 

4 posts up lol.

 

It seems since the last change I made the behavior is quite distinctively different from before. The last change being the 'Sony Notebook Control Device' driver seems to have proved somewhat a worthy remedy.

When I watched a movie where it would frequently pause, the sound would continue, and after 2 seconds or so it will 'come to' and play the video at rapid speed to catch up to where it needs to be it no longer does this. Instead it seems there are very, very short spurts during playback that I have noticed, but you don't really notice them unless you are actually looking for it.

I have monitored CPU and hard drive usage closely and discovered that when playing videos it almost never uses more than 15 percent of my cpu and has not spiked up over 70 percent at any one given time. Hard drive usage stays pretty much under 20 percent usage as well at all times during playback.

I did not notice any processes affecting the performance either.

Where I would play games like the Witcher it would have these pauses where I would click on something and all would be frozen for a whole 2 seconds with the exception of my mouse cursor. When it would 'come to' again, it would still carry out the actions I have performed with my mouse or keyboard. It would do this rather frequently like every 3 minutes and would make battling extremely difficult and frustrating. Now since that particular driver change it seems to only happen like once every hour if that which I consider a major improvement.

Even when browsing through my folders in the explorer it would have these weird freezing moments. When my notebook would decide to do that pause thing, I would go to click on a folder to enter the folder and it would sit there as if I didn't even click on it. It would not highlight the folder or anything and no working in background mouse cursor hourglass, but I know I did not miss when I clicked on it. Then when it decided to 'come to' again after said time, it would rapidly highlight the folder like it was supposed to those few seconds ago and enter the folder I clicked on, too..... from a few seconds ago. I could still move the mouse cursor around the screen, but even if I moved it over the "X" to close the window it would not highlight that either. If I clicked on the "X" during that moment, however, it would still close the window when it 'came to' again.

It seems I may actually be getting somewhere with this. I still wish I could figure out the nature of this weird problem.

Normally the basic drivers that come with Windows are good enough for basic devices and I leave those be, but for this VAIO I think there may be an exception here.

Even though I am relieved that the problem is less of a problem now I still hope to find a way to remedy it completely.

 

I appreciate your help Jasp. I was wondering what you might have for a conclusion. I wonder what this driver has done differently and what it addresses exactly. I was wondering if you might know something about it.

 

Sadly not, never owned a vaio personally, looking up the device driver you mentioned though gives very little info on what it actually does other then helps control other utilitys or installs essential system components. A tiny bit of info on wiki mentions it could control the following parts.

* Fn keys (hotkeys)
* Jogdial
* Motion Eye camera (C1VE/C1VN series)
* display brightness control
* display brightness on boot
* sound card poweron/poweroff
* NIC poweron/poweroff
* GPRS/EDGE modem power
* Bluetooth power
* Fan speed

The bit that intrests me is the fan speed? normally this is bios controlled.

 

As it does not really cure the problem, it does help. Although the strange part is it does nothing for my fn keys like it claims. I am supposed to be able to control the volume using the fn key combos like most laptops and even with this driver they still don't work. That's okay though because I downloaded a simple program a while back called "Sound volume hotkeys" where I can just use the windows key and the up & down arrows.

Still doesn't make sense. Guess I'll just have to live with it.

I talked to a guy in another forum about this, too. I figure if I can save up enough money even by selling this unit for some $$$ I am considering one of those MSI GT models. My brother owns the MSI GT735 and performs outstandingly well. I would love to have one of those myself and eventually ditch this one. I won't have any problems if I get my hands on one of those puppies! My jaw drops to their benchmarks!!! AARRRRGGGHH I want one!!!!

 

I just wanted to thank you again for your time Jasp... and for putting up with me . That program you found on Microsoft's site IS pretty cool!

I also have looked online about that driver and found no more than you did which is why I asked if you knew about it by *slim* chance.

I also tend to get long winded when it comes to my computers and I apologize for that, but I do thank you.

I have decided I'll just have to work with it the way it is and just wait until I get a new one. Kinda stinks it's like this tho.

 

Its something that really would irratate the hell out of me as well until i figured what it was lol.

 

Well, it seems I have discovered the problem. I had heard from my friend that someone else who had the same problem on their desktop had their hard drive and video card replaced. So I went out on a limb and decided to buy a brand new hard drive and try that to see what would happen.

I pulled both hard drives (Toshiba 80GB and WD 250GB) as my Vaio holds two hard drives and replaced them with ONE WD 320GB. By doing this I have addressed several possible issues. One being that I was using two hard drives on the same controller (OLD Silicon Image SATA controller) with one possibly being bad if not both. Another was that two hard drives would consume twice as much power as just one (obviously) and this newer hard drive has lower power consumption than your typical notebook drive being WD's Blue series notebook HDD. Furthermore, this notebook may not have agreed with the Toshiba's hard drive's electronics to begin with.

Since I have swapped out the two drives for this *one* I have been watching videos on it a lot these past two days straight and not once have I noticed the weird hesitation issue. It's still pretty sad that it took me this long to figure it out, but, hey, at least I can't complain anymore and the notebook won't have to become scrap now because of it. I'm glad I'm able to relax with it now.