Movie Player Problem

[Styxbound]

Guys, i'm in deep with an Hp 1735w Pavilion again. The problem is
playing dvd movies. So far I've done each of the following at least twice:
Installed and re-installed VLC, Pinnacle, Media Player, and Interactual. Installed
and uninstalled two known good video cards. Uninstalled and re-installed
video drivers. Tried different resolutions, refresh rates, and hardware
acceleration. The video started cutting out when I try to play a disk; checked
cpu temp and found it at 145F; cleaned and reseated heat sink which
brought it down to127F. Installed ac3 filter. At one point it did actually play
the movie but with no sound (plays music cds with no problem). I'm beginning
to suspect a cpu or board problem, or maybe power supply_haven't checked
voltage on that yet. Anyone have any ideas? Me and Mr. Google are
plum' out. Oh, this is xp home, amd cpu.

 

[Charlotte PC]

Not familiar with that model. Is it on board video or video card in slot?

 

[Styxbound]

It's onboard, Charlotte PC. It's a pretty common asus board in those old Compaqs and HP's.

 

[Methical]

See if you can play a video with GeexBox

Its a bootable CD (very very small, < 20mb) that can be copied to RAM once booted. So then you can try your DVD's from there and see if it works from the LiveCD Media Player. If it does, then you can rule out hardware issues

Very strange issue you are having .. CPU seems rather high (i don't know about Farenheit, but that sounds like a really high number). Just done my calculations, and its around 50-65 degress celcius (145F and 127F) Still high

 

[Styxbound]

Thanks for the reply Methical; I'll give that a shot. Yes, that temp seems pretty high to me too, especially after re-seating the heat sink. I have the same board _asus a7v8x_ in one of my machines and average temp is around 100F, I'm thinking. Have to check that tomorrow.

 

[Morrison5891]

Have you tried enabling DMA Mode?

in device manager under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers...

 

[Styxbound]

Thanks for the idea, Morrison; no, I haven't tried that and you may have something there. One of the things it keeps doing is failing to find the dvd_the main other thing is a message about screen settings. Also tried different dvd players too, by the way. One other thing I ran across is that there supposedly is a different way to install agp cards or pci; the cards I tried were agp.

 

[Styxbound]

Methical, this just gets stranger and stranger. I tried Geexbox and the video cuts off when it reaches the "loading media center". In debugging mode it produces a string of "acpi_can't turn on cooling device". Of course the only cooling device is the cpu fan and it's running.
Morrison, I checked and it was set to dma.

 

[Styxbound]

Finally the problem seems to be resolved. Changed the ram which may or may not have helped_and ran chkdsk /r 3 times from the recovery console. The first time it said there were no problems and the disk didn't need checking. Ran it again. This time it did a quickie and said it found 1 problem. Ran it the third time which took probably 45 minutes, got up to 70% then went back to 50% before it finally went ahead and finished. And viola!_the problem seems to be solved.
Any of you guys got a "jinx" model you just refuse to work on? No more hp 735's for me. At this point it ain't a superstition, it's just a natural fact.