G41 Slow Media Problem

[futurejp]

So sorry if this is the wrong forum.

I have a G41 Thinkpad, and certain operations I do with media are incredibly slow. They weren't always this way, but have been for the past couple months.

For example, when I play a DVD on my laptop, after a few minutes, the picture/video will start acting up (hanging on a frame for a fraction of a second, then jumping to another frame...like it's stuttering) and then soon the sound does, too. But then if I pause the DVD, wait a couple minutes, and then play again, it's all fine, until it happens again a few minutes later. What I noticed was interesting was that the other day, I watched a movie from a DVD that I had burned as a data file (instead of an actual DVD disc), and it worked perfectly. So I thought it was weird that when my computer tried to read a real DVD movie disc, it got jumpy every few minutes, but when reading a movie off a DVD data disc, it was fine.

Also, I use dbPowerAmp to convert lots of media, usually from flac/shn to mp3 (lossless lovers, don't hate me. I don't distribute it after converting). When I use, say, my brother's computer (a nothing-special desktop PC), the conversion is anywhere from 15x to 20x. But on my laptop, if I close all programs and just sit back, it maybe gets 3x speed at most. And if I do other things while the conversion happens, it can drop below 1x.

Along those same lines, I also have a program to rip audio from DVDs, like concert DVDs I own. That is also very very slow, probably the same as the dbPowerAmp conversions.

And lastly, I'm not sure if it directly applies, but I seem to get Skype errors after being on a call from 5-10 minutes long, and nobody I've talked to on Skype has those problems. It sort of freezes up and gives me an error message, and I have to restart the program for it to work again.

I don't know much at all about the workings of computers, I'm sorry to say, but I tried updating my DVD drive's driver (MATSHITA UJDA760 DVD/CDRW), display adapters (Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller), and a Legacy Audio driver, but they all said there was no better match that could be found.

Thanks for reading this. If you have any ideas, please suggest them, and if you need more clarification, I'm more than happy to try to describe more accurately what's happening.

[futurejp]

Anyone?

Things seem to take up an unusual percentage of my CPU usage, as seen by going to the Processes tab in the Task Manager and looking under the CPU column. For example, my DVD problem happens in InterVideo WinDVD, Windows Media Player, and VLC (so it's not an isolated program problem). But if I play a DVD, and look in that column in Task Manager, when the DVD is NOT 'stuttering', it takes about 10-20% of the CPU, and when it stutters, it jumps up at least 2 or 3 times that. So sometimes it seems like these media operations (watching, converting, etc.) I try to do conjur up unnecessarily large amounts of CPU usage. And then the question is is it some malfunction with something in my computer that makes these programs so slow, which raises the CPU usage, or does the CPU usage raise for some reason, and then cause these programs to go really slowly? ...Or something like that :-p

[jfsmith]

It would appear that something other than the app you're running is stealing CPU cycles. Spyware/malware -- or even a Trojan or virus -- are possiblities that leap to mind ...

[futurejp]

Well I'm at college, and so I had to set up certain antivirus stuff to be allowed on the network...and HiJackThis hasn't caught anything, either...

[a31pguy]

10 to 1 - it's not hardware. You can confirm this by booting a gentoo linux distro from CD and seeing if you still experience the same issue.

But I'll bet dollars to donuts that it's a misbehaving app. Memory leaks, Registry problems, or some app (like spyware) that is running in the background.

Hijack this is not the best utility to find this stuff. Check out autoruns on the Sysinternals site and run it. Get rid of things you don't need and I'll wager you'll find your issue.

[futurejp]

Thanks for the advice about Autoruns, but I'm afraid I don't know enough to really tell if there's something out of place. I quickly glanced through it, there's lots of startup processes, and I didn't see anything obviously spyware...but I still can't really tell what should be there and what shouldn't. What should I do?

[a31pguy]

Welcome to the work of desktop engineering! There is another systinternals util called process explorer. One of the nice things is it has an auto-google it function. This will let you know what the process is. If it were easy (I wish it was) - then there would be an automatic tool that would zap spyware automatically. The best way is to go through it one by one.

[futurejp]

Oh, ok. This Autoruns program can Google it, too, if you right click and press Google. But there were a few hundred of them, so I guess I'll just break out the comfy chair . I'll disable anything that hints at being not standard or not safe.

[a31pguy]

You might want to try it the other way. Disable anything that your sure is spyware or junk. Lot of vendors throw in junk programs along side things like AIM or YIM (for example).

[futurejp]

There's an item listed as OaMCPClient, and the 'real' name of it is InprocServer32, which, Googled, tells me it's a registry thing, and it says in Autoruns "File not found"...so could that be some sort of corrupted registry thing? ...sorry if that sounds very stupid.

[futurejp]

I ran Registry First Aid, and it found at least 1000 things...is it safe to assume I can let it fix everything it turned up? I think they're mostly from things I deleted/uninstalled.

Edit: Nevermind, it wasn't freeware. Could only fix a handful of entries.

[R51-Smashedbanana]

There is a more straightforward way.

Start -> run -> type MSCONFIG -> click the last tab that says "Startup" -> remove as many checks as you can -> you CAN remove all, but if there is an APP that you need to launch at statup it will disable it (only on startup, you can still launch it manually) -> click apply -> restart -> when it restarts close the box that appears about configuration

Ed

[futurejp]

Well, I did that, so my startup programs have been largely cut. In the Processes tab of the task manager, the types of processes could be SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, NETWORK SERVICE, or the User's service. The only program listed as Mike (me) was explorer.exe. Everything else was a system process, I suppose. And I tried playing a DVD and converting a song, and the CPU percentage still shot up. So it doesn't seem like a memory leak, because...I had no programs running! And I've done a few full system scans, and none turned up spyware or anything.

By the way, one of the startup processes I turned off was the process that activates the volume up/down buttons (above F4). Does anyone know which process this is, so I can turn it back on?