Jinn

So.. I've got a shitty old DVD player drive, a 24x HP CDWriter CD-burner, a 200 GB IDE hard-drive and a 60 GB IDE hard-drive. Master-slave, Master-slave. They're all taken up.

I've also got 1GB PC3200 Corsair RAM and an X800 XL.

Now -- the question. Playing games, or watching MPEG3 movies on my computer is not a problem. Lately, however.. I'll be watching a DVD movie (straight from the box -- not burned) and my computer will stall out. The hard-drive light will be going crazy, enough though I have nothing running in the background. It makes the movie pause for 8 or 10 seconds (really annoying when it happens every minute or so..)

Is this the IDE ribbons being in contention for resources? If so, how can I solve the problem...? I'm tempted to scrap the two optical drives and buy one huge DVD/CD burning/reading combo, but I don't want the problem to happen again.

Anybody got a clue?

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"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

canuckguy

i take it videos play fine off the harddrives directly, as well any skipping if playing just a regular music cd?

Jinn

Movies and songs from CD or HD are fine..

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

canuckguy

what movie player software do you use, WMP, powerdvd? do they all skip?

Jinn

WMP -- PowerDVD doesn't seem to work for me.

I'm not sure if its the player.. its pretty random when/where it happens in the movie, so I'd have to watch a movie all the way through in each player..

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

connyosis

Try vlc, always worked way better than anything else for me.
Also, you made sure all cables are secured properly? I know I've had weird problems before that appeared because of cables not being attached properly.

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MikeSty

My advice is to put one HDD and ODD on the same cable, then put the other HDD and ODD on the same cable. I've had a buttload of trouble with two opticals on one channel :-/

flat5

Might your DVD player not like the copy protection scheme being used?
Is there a firmware update for the drive?

Does the drive play unprotected DVDs correctly?

Just a thought...

and another...
If you just leave connected the boot drive, and this DVD drive on the sec. controller does the problem go away?