Video and Sound Stuttering With Vista

I'm going crazy trying to figure this out....

I've done an upgrade installation of Vista a few weeks ago and when I play games or play videos the sound and graphics will slow down occasionally (every 2 to 3 minutes). The slow down will last a second or two, but it's enough that it is noticeable. I've updated all the drivers from Dell's site, but I can't figure out what the problem is. I noticed that the hard drive is thrashing when these slow downs occur, I'm thinking that it might be a memory issue.

I did shut down superfetch in vista and the sidebar but the slowdowns still occur. I'm thinking maybe I need to do a clean install, but it would be really annoying if I did the install and that didn't help. If anyone can help I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

Um I get that with my SZ but it lasts like 2-5 seconds when I'm just playing music on Windows Media Player or browsing the Internet. It suddenly goes in to this "slow down" mode.

Why?

UPDATE

I've got system resources window opened and I noticed something when this "stutter" happens. The processor load needle shoots up to 60-80% load and that's when everything slows down for about 2-5seconds and returns to normal again. This happens like in a constant interval, which I can't pin-point but the sense of "every now and then" it happens.

What the...?

 

No one else with this problem? I've been using my laptop since 3pm today and its' been 6+hours and it happens like between 10-20mins intervals. Just keeps on shooting up to 90% and back to 5%.

It just happened RIGHT NOW while I was typing.

 

hey i had the same problem with cpu usage and stuttering of music and sound but resolved it...this is what i did...went to control panel..then switched to classic view and went to system- then device manager...under disk drives selected the hard drive and right click properties...under the tab went to policies...then ticked the checked box for ' enable advanced performance'

hope that helps

 

I've enabled it now and hoepfully it won't come up again.

Let you know ;-) but thanks for the tip.

 

yeah let us know...i had the same thing and kept stressing me cos it was so annoying and my cpu usage would jolt up to 50-100% just from using windows media player or when a sound would come up

 

Problem still here. It's really annoying and p***ing me off man!

Here are some evidence shots.




While running this process and it just happend again!!! AHHHHHHH!!!

 

Yeah I did this before I posted and I still have the problem.
I'm going to try a clean install and see if that works.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=1858681#post1858681

Look at post 11. I don't know if this is the problem, but it seems feasible.

 

Interesting but this sucks totally. I mean this is a brand new laptop with CoreDuo2!! 1.86Ghz of it. Surely it's fast enough for the majority of tasks.

I really hope this is a Windows driver problem cause hoping for Sony vaio to release new drivers could take even longer!!

 

Found the trouble maker!!!


It was running happily at 5-10% when those two things suddenly shot up and slowed everything down. How can that be resolved?

 

svchost.exe is a file that calls Windows services from DLLs. Basically, it allows Windows services to run. Both of the svchost processes you have listed refer to networking features (DCOM has to do with networking), so the only thing I can figure is that Windows is attempting to ensure that you're not trying to share these HD files over a network. I really don't see any other reason that they would suddenly spike so much when just playing media files.

 

Yeh it happens like half way through each of my tracks. It's really annoying, just spikes for about 2-3 seconds then returns back to 0 again.

Why are they playing up ??

 

Go into MSConfig, then into "service". There's an option for Windows Media Player Networking that you can stop from loading. This is the same service that spikes for me as well. Not sure what is is (sounds like it's related to the above thread above WMP and DRM, but it does cause a spike which makes the hard drive spion like crazy). Give it a shot.

 

it could be a WMP implementation of daap, which is the "de facto" protocol for sharing music libraries over a LAN.

I'm sure it's been "embraced and extended" with DRM features that will send a large man with a bat to your house, though.

 

What if I don't even share any of my stuff across the network? It's only me in the house with the computers.

Tried disabling the Media Player Network Sharing, but its' still very slow during song transitions.

It's the damn svchost.exe(DcomLaunch) - Host Process for Windows Services thats slowing the system down when changing tracks.

So annoying.

If there's only a way to disable it somehow so I can confirm that, but it won't let me disable it.

 

On Fujitsu Siemens Xi1554..... it is the VIA Serial ATA RAID controllers VT6421 that causes the problem.

Download the newest driver: Version - 5.50b

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1180&SubCatID=117

Uninstall old driver in Windows uninstaller --- and IMPORTEN --- DO NOT RESTART (if you do, you get blue screen on startup) ---
just install new driver and then restart.

 

The only videos I have trouble with is with CNET TV and MSBNC on IE7. On Opera it runs fine. On XP I have no trouble with any videos.

 

You do realize that drivers in vista are now required to do checks to make sure that sound and video isn't protected and copyrighted, and you aren't trying to copy it or anything? You may be running into flak from that (which is very hard to trace).

Edit: After a bit of research, it just seems like MS screwed the pooch with their DCOM Launch service there, which is how applications talk to each other internally. Probably a bug in IE and Media Player talking, which is what's eating up your CPU time, or whatever checks they're doing.

And people wonder why I don't like Vista... freakin' system is completely opaque, and you can't fix it if it's broken. XP is bad enough. [/rant]

 

Well I fixed this problem couple of months ago by unchecking the 'System Sound Effect' from the Sound option. No more stuttering or slowness, however I have no idea what that option has to do with anything cause everything still works, sound-wise, but fixed the Windows Media Player playback problem.