Question about Microsoft Media Player 9

[Flatfoot]

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[TKpervert]

Your machine may be short on memory. Shut down all other applications and see if that helps.

 

[Flatfoot]

Thanks for your help.

Crap, man. I was hoping it wasn't a memory issue. I'm running WinXP Professional on 64mb of ram(bare minimum), so I almost expected it. Well, I closed every active application, but to no avail. The video files still flicker incessantly. I'd try messing with some of the processes in the Task Manager, but I don't really know what does what.

Do you know any good tweaking tricks to free up some memory for WinXP Pro? My skills are stuck in the old days of MS-DOS 6, with FREEMEM and MEMMAKER.

 

[Sadistictickler]

with the process-stuff, just give it a try, I tried closing every application resulting in 4 reboots but eventually a much faster system...

 

[ticklishbbw]

I really can't help with your original question, but this website does a great job of telling you what the task list items are, and which ones are safe to close/disable. Click this link, then click on the task list button. It's organized alphabetically. I've found the site very useful when I can't figure out what a task list program/process is.

http://www.answersthatwork.com/

tbbw

 

[Flatfoot]

Thanks, ticklishbbw, Sadistictickler, and TKPervert. I appreciate all your help. Hopefully I'll be able to speed up my POS Compaq Presario, in general, for other reasons besides just the Media Player.

 

[TKpervert]

WHOA !!!! 64 MB ??

XP crawls with 256MB, it prefers 512MB, and Media Player is a memory hog in it's own right.
Memory is cheap, will your Compaq handle 512 MB ?

 

[Flatfoot]

I've got a Compaq Presario 5000US. When this POS was originally manufactured, 64 mb and 128 mb were the most commonly manufactured setups. I was just looking on google for cheap memory upgrades, and the best I found for my system was for 256 mb of RAM at $89.00 on http://www.4allmemory.com. I'm no expert on computer hardware or RAM/motherboard compatibility, but I'm thinking anything higher would probably require that I get a new motherboard. Fundage ain't exactly looking like it's gonna permit such drastic changes to my pitiful setup, either, unless you know of someplace better to look than what I found on my first search. I'm definitely open to suggestions.

I've been spending most of today trying to clean up my computer of unnecessary stuff, doing anything I could possibly think of to increase the operational capabilities. I've screwed with msconfig, disk cleanup, and I'm probably gonna do a defrag in a little while (though I doubt it needs one, since I already did one, recently.).

Geez, I miss the good old days of MS-DOS and Windows 3.1. Oh well.

 

[BOFH666]

Re: Thanks for your help.

Crap, man. I was hoping it wasn't a memory issue. I'm running WinXP Professional on 64mb of ram(bare minimum), so I almost expected it. Well, I closed every active application, but to no avail. The video files still flicker incessantly. I'd try messing with some of the processes in the Task Manager, but I don't really know what does what.

Do you know any good tweaking tricks to free up some memory for WinXP Pro? My skills are stuck in the old days of MS-DOS 6, with FREEMEM and MEMMAKER.

Colour me impressed, I had no idea XP Pro would even RUN in 64Meg. Unfortunatley I think TKpervert is right on the money here, there isn't going to be a cost-free ending to this one as really Windows isn't terribly happy with that amount of memory, period.

Ummm, one thing to try if you have a second hard drive, shift the swap file over to it. This might sound silly but in your case it will REALLY speed things up as XP will be swapping large chunks of itself out to the hard disk just to keep running and that can cause problems if you're reading in data at the same time from the same disk. Oh, and if you can try to give the main hard drive (i.e. whatever holds your windows installation) an IDE cable to itself.

 

[BOFH666]

Ummm, another thought, do you HAVE to run XP? With that setup you might be much better off sticking with Windows 98 if you could...

Also, try turning off all the "eye candy" in XP. It all takes up memory so go back to the absolute basics. Every little helps.

 

[Flatfoot]

Thanks, guys. I've already stripped it down to the basics, getting rid of all unnecessary eye candy. I originally installed XP Pro, because I had Windows ME on there, and I was sick of the bugs and constant locking up for no apparant reason.

As far as the second harddrive, are you talking about "partitioning"? Somebody at work was telling me something about that, but I didn't quite understand what he meant. I've got my main harddrive, the C:, and then I've got a D:, listed as SYSTEM SAVE. I don't remember how I got that setup in the first place, since it was so long ago, but do you know how I can allocate more space to that D:? This guy at work recommended something like dividing it completely in half, or having a "mirror copy" of the harddrive if one needed to reformat or something, or are you referring to something else?

 

[BOFH666]

Thanks, guys. I've already stripped it down to the basics, getting rid of all unnecessary eye candy. I originally installed XP Pro, because I had Windows ME on there

AIEEEEEE!!!!! May I sugest burning your PC and scattering the ashes? It's the only way to be SURE the evil is destroyed! 😉

As far as the second harddrive, are you talking about "partitioning"? Somebody at work was telling me something about that, but I didn't quite understand what he meant. I've got my main harddrive, the C:, and then I've got a D:, listed as SYSTEM SAVE. I don't remember how I got that setup in the first place, since it was so long ago, but do you know how I can allocate more space to that D:? This guy at work recommended something like dividing it completely in half, or having a "mirror copy" of the harddrive if one needed to reformat or something, or are you referring to something else?

Right, firs things first, go and smack him upside the head. What he's talking about is rubbish as having a copy of your hard disk is only any use if it's on a different physical drive. Otherwise if you have a problem C Drive for whatever reason, the odds are pretty good the backup will die as well.

Okay, I'm writing this quickly so if anything's unclear, just yell. Hard disks are, basically, a collection of 'platters' not unlike a CD, all mounted on a spindle. The whole lot is then stuck inside a box, vacuum sealed and has some hardware added to it which controls the drive and transfers data. Depending on the number of platters, and the amount of data that can be stored on each one, the size of a hard drive varies.

When a PC is built you take one physical drive and use software to divide it into as many 'logical' drives as you want or need. So, for example, if you had a 20gb disk, you may decide to create a single 20gb drive, or ten 2gb drives but you will still only have one physical disk.

Having two physical disks in your system can be quite handy for a couple of reasons. The first, and most obvious, is if anything fries on one disk it rarely takes the other one with it. This way, provided you remember to backup any inportant data, you'll have a backup of your tickling po... ummm, I mean, important work related materials for when you fix the machine.

The other reason is for speed purposes. Inside most computers more than a year old data transfer to and from the hard disks and CD-ROM drives is handled by something called IDE. Now I won't go into specifics, but most PC's have two IDE connections, each of which take a single cable that can be attached to up to two drives.

The problem is that IDE cables can only 'talk' to one drive or device at a time. To make matters worse the IDE cable must run at the speed of the slowest device attached to it. So if, for example, you have your CD drive and hard drive attached to the same cable not only will your hard drive be, effectively, hamstrung by the cable running at the speed of the CD, but if the CD is in use the machine cannot use the hard disk. In practice of course the machine doesn't use the CD all the time so splits its available time between the two drives but it's still a huge performance hit.

Now the above is a bit of a simplification but it does, more-or-less, cover the basics. So what do you need to do about this?

Simplest thing to do is to take the case off your pc and have a look around. IDE cables are (usually) long wide grey things that'll be either tided in awkward places or flapping around loose and messing up airflow through the case. Find a hard drive (3.5" wide metal box with no slots for disks to be inserted 😉 ) and trace the cable that comes out of it back to the motherboard. Look for any other devices on the cable and any other IDE cables in the machine. If there aren't any see if there's a spare socket for one on the motherboard next to the existing cable.

Basically, if you're going to do the trick mentioned above with moving the swapfile, you need a second physical hard disk and it needs to be on a different IDE cable than the other physical disk. That way Windows can access both its swapfile AND any data it needs at the same time.

Hope that helps, if there's anything that needs clearing up just let me know.

Steve.

 

[TKpervert]

Wow BOFH666, you're really getting down to the nitty-gritty here.
A seperate IDE cable for the main hard drive ? You obviously know your stuff, but I'm afraid it's like offering Flatfoot a teaspoon when what he really needs is a big shovel.

The 5000US came with a 750MHz processor, so there could be a speed issue here too.

I'm running a 2.4 GHz Intel with 512 MB and even this monster begs for mercy sometimes when I invoke Media Player. I have to shut stuff down to watch Media Player clips. Never a problem with RealPlayer.

Flatfoot, I think you're gonna have to cough up some cash.

 

[TKpervert]

AIEEEEEE!!!!! May I sugest burning your PC and scattering the ashes? It's the only way to be SURE the evil is destroyed! 😉
Steve.

Amen.

 

[Flatfoot]

One thing eludes me

Thanks for all your help, guys.

Aside from general struggling to use applications (My computer sounds like Spike Dudley trying to lift a pickup truck.), I've NEVER had any problems with Media Player, as far as the images of video files flickering like an old Black and white silent film, until I installed the most recent version. If this is a memory issue, how much more memory is needed for Media Player 9 than the previous version? I wish I could just remove the update.

 

[BOFH666]

Wow BOFH666, you're really getting down to the nitty-gritty here.
A seperate IDE cable for the main hard drive ? You obviously know your stuff, but I'm afraid it's like offering Flatfoot a teaspoon when what he really needs is a big shovel.

The 5000US came with a 750MHz processor, so there could be a speed issue here too.

I'm running a 2.4 GHz Intel with 512 MB and even this monster begs for mercy sometimes when I invoke Media Player. I have to shut stuff down to watch Media Player clips. Never a problem with RealPlayer.

Flatfoot, I think you're gonna have to cough up some cash.

Ah, but wise man say when piggy bank be empty even a spoon can be used as a shovel.

As for knowing my stuff... let's just say that half of our work machine's aren't too far off this spec so tweaking is a way of life... sadly.

*Resists temptation to get involved in digital tool waving.....*

Oh, and what's wrong with the forum Smilies huh? Not good enough for ya? 😉

 

[TKpervert]

Oh, and what's wrong with the forum Smilies huh? Not good enough for ya? 😉

Well shit, haven't figured out how to get to 'em yet, only been here 18 months. Workin on it.

 

[Flatfoot]

Well guys, I figured something out to fix the performance of the media player. I went into options, clicked on the performance tab, and then unclicked every checkbox in there. Not sure what any of that stuff was supposed to do, but now it works like it used to. Thanks, guys. Once I get paid and definitely have a little money to throw around, I'll probably come harass you guys again for system upgrade recommendations.

 

[BOFH666]

10% commision on all new purchases based on recomendations please! 😀

 

[TKpervert]

Good !!!

Sys upgrade recs ? Bury the Compaq and get a Sony 2.4 with 512.

 

[TKpervert]

Hell I'll go 7%.

 

[BOFH666]

Well shit, haven't figured out how to get to 'em yet, only been here 18 months. Workin on it.

Psst, when posting there's a box to the left <---- with Smilies in it. Click on the Get More link on the bottom. Should fire up a new window holding all available smilies. Click on the one you want and it'll drop it in on the bottom of your reply.

 

[BOFH666]

Hell I'll go 7%.

LOL, now now, no bidding wars please. 10% standard fee and whoever's recomendation gets purchased gets the commision. Fair? 😀

Oh, and forget the 2.4 Sony, build your own and get something properly quick! 😉 Actually, scrap that, buy NOTHING at the moment. There's a whole load of big changes coming up to PC's this year, so I'd suggest waiting until those changes hit before parting with your hard earned.