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DVD movies problem: My computer and the DVD drive work properly, but the sound is crackly and the picture is jerky

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CD/DVD/Blu-ray drive/writer problem: DVD movies - Sound crackly, picture jerky

My Toshiba Equium A100 laptop/notebook computer runs Windows XP Media Center. It has an nVidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics processor, a 1.6GHz processor, integrated Realtec audio. I can use WinDVD, which was pre-installed, and Nero 7 Premium, which includes Nero Show Time. When the computer plays DVD movies the sound is crackly and the pictures are slightly jerky. It used to play DVDs without any problems. Otherwise, the computer itself and the DVD drive work properly. I have tried reinstalling Nero, but not WinDVD, because I have to run the Recovery CD that restores the system to the state it was in when it left the factory.

Answer

The jerky pictures and poor sound quality are most probably caused by the IDE controller (the computer has an IDE (PATA) hard disk drive) not being set to Direct Memory Access (DMA) mode, which allows the DVD drive to transfer data directly to the RAM memory instead of via the processor. The alternative mode is called PIO mode, which makes use of the processor. During a DVD movie, the processor's workload gets too heavy and the stress on it makes the video become jerky and the sound quality deteriorate.

The following article should contain all of the information you need to fix the problem.

DMA reverts to PIO - The stuttering DVD drive or the lame hard disk -

http://winhlp.com/node/10

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