T20 DVD Stutter During Playback

[tcfpcm]

I bought a refurbished t20 becuase I used to have one for work with windows 2000. DVDs played great in it, but I upgraded my refurbed t20 and upgraded the memory to 384, but dvds stutter...

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

[sktn77a]

DVDs should play fine on a T20. Your problem could be a clogged up O/S and registry - did you do a clean install of the OS when you got the computer? Or, it could be a slighly misaligned drive. What decoder are you using - DVD Express?

If you take out the new memory and go back to your previous configuration, do the DVDs play fine again?

[tcfpcm]

Keith,

thanks for the reply. I did a fresh install of windows xp, and the dvds stuttered with the original 128 megs or memory. It's a pretty fresh install, so I don't think that is the problem. I have also closed down all tasks in the task manager except the dvd player, and still have the stuttering. I noticed that xvids playing off the HD have the same problem.

Can you tell me more about a misaligned drive.

Thanks!

[G-Man]

Try a different DVD player: WinDVD, PowerDVD etc. I don't think it's a hardware issue.

Regards,
G-Man

[hausman]

Find a DVD that isn't region-coded (RC=0) and isn't Macrovision protected. Copy the VIDEO_TS directory to your hard disk and then try to play it from there. Alternatively download an MPEG file off the Internet and play it. If that works stutter-free then the problem is with the DVD drive. (But as others have already suggested, it's probably not a hardware problem.)

Probably the "leanest" DVD player software is VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

[tcfpcm]

Funny enough, VLC is the one that I've been using. I'll try one of the comercial trials.

Thanks all!

[sktn77a]

If video playback from the hard drive stutters also, then it doesn't sound like a DVD drive problem. Try Hausman's suggestion.