DVD/CD skipping on all DVDs/CDs played

I can open any program to play a DVD (WinDVD, WMP, VLC) and after about 10 minutes it will freeze for 1 second or so, then go back to playing normally, after that it's about 5 minutes between each skip (an approximation, I never actually timed it). Same goes with CDs, it will freeze for about 1 second and then go back to playing. I know it's not the drive, I tried it on Quickplay (not in Windows) and it works just fine, I just like playing DVDs in Windows better, but I can't figure this out. I tried Uninstalling WinDVD and reinstalling it, to find the same problem. I tried installing VLC player just to find that it also skips in VLC. This has been going on for a couple of months and it's driving me crazy, I don't feel like formatting because one time I formatted a computer and reinstalled XP and now it lost it's capability to play DVDs, even after trying to install WinDVD; I don't want that to happen with a computer I saved up for a year just to get.
Thanks for any help.

 

Didn't your computer ask you to make a recovery disK?

 

I have an XP fresh install disk, and a driver/software DVD.

 

it sounds like you might have a process in the background that is running and taking up alot of resources (something like Antivirus, firewall, etc). I know on my laptop which has similar specs to yours, playing dvd/music takes up a good portion of my resources, so if i have any software that is a resource hog running in the back ground, then my cd/dvd starts to have problems.

You can see if this is happening by viewing your task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) while you are playing a cd/dvd.

 

I have both AVG and Avast Antivirus programs running, NHC, Wallpaper Master (program that changes wallpaper in increments), that's the basic stuff running in the taskbar.
What confuses me is why it doesn't do this when running music/videos off the hard drive, only DVD/CDs.

 

I don't know if this will solve anything or not, but on Dell, some laptops have been set for PIO mode instead of DMA mode which has caused performance problems when using the cd/dvd drive. Here is how to change it:

My Computer->Properties->Click on the hardware tab->Device Manager->IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers->Right Click on Secondary IDE Channel->Properties->Advanced Settings

 

I know it's been awhile since this has been posted in, but I've been out of town for a week w/ no internet connection.
Would changing it to PIO work, it's already on DMA, but there's only a Primary IDE channel, no secondary, could i change it on that?
I couldn't get it to stop doing it by disabling a bunch of background programs I didn't need open. At first i though it was wallpaper master that was the problem, everytime the wallpaper changed it would skip (I thought and tested to be not so).