inherited laptop does not play movies well :(

hi all,
I inherited a free HP laptop. the person thought thehard drive was fried,but itwas not....

It is a HP 1.2Gigceleron, 256 meg ram, shared Vid Memory 32 meg. 20 gig 4200 Hard drive,DVDrom etc...

I wanted a laptop to play all my AVImovies on my tv. I put a few in, and they play terrible, the video and audio never are aligned and it playsvery choppy. Now, Shouldnt this play movies good since it comes with a DVD player? Im confused why it does not..

would addinga stick of 512 help? I did notice that when playing avi or divx movies with win media player 9, and DIvix player 6.2 thecpu usage is maxed out..so will ramhelp that?

I dontunderstand why it does not play...it should..

Thanks in advance..

Derek

 

try powerdvd 30 day trial and see if the movies play right.
go here
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/download/trials_1_ENU.html

and install more ram..512 is good...

 

enen though i am trying toplay an AVI Xvid?

 

i tied viewing a DVDwith the DVD player on the laptop. the same thing happens... it isvery choppy..this shoud work?i cant see why not.? the onlything i have not updated is the audio Drivers.

 

scan for spyware/virii, etc. those specs are pretty low for video; more ram would definitely help, and if you're trying to play video from the hard drive, you need something faster than 4200 rpm. even 5600 is slow. 7200 seesm to be the standard for most things. make sure the compie is dust-free interally and is getting a good circulation of cool air.

 

thanks...so would it play better if i ran it right off the DVDdrive? as i said..this is an AVI vid...but i do have it on a disk..

Derek

 

you could try it; it's a slow drive with little ram and an older processor. you're going to have a hard time getting it to work without a little upgrading, i feel.

 

oh i am deff getting more Ram. i already have a 256meg chip in here with an emply slot. ill get a 512stick,and then ill replace the 256 at a later date for 1 gig i think 256, and a 512 should do the trick,...

 

132 free before playing movie and 111 free with 100% cpu usage during play of movie

why would this laptop come with a dvd player if it Cant play dvd's??

 

i have a hp 450ghz laptop with 256 ram using windows 98se 6gb hard drive with powerdvd also same laptop another hard drive xp installed
and i have no problems watching dvd movies..

 

ok...man....how is that p0ossible? am i missing something? like a driver? or de-coder??

 

my original dvd program that came with the hp laptop would play the movies like crap..skip and freeze thats why i suggested powerdvd..
installed powerdvd and had then no problems playing the movies..
the version is 4.0..i never upgraded to 7...


upgrade directx that might help..
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/default.mspx

 

is 9.0c the latest? i got that. it seemed to help the audio catch up to mthe video or vice versa. I am thinking it ismaybe a audio driver issue? it isa 97via codec. i THINK i got the latestbut im not sure. this laptop SHOULD play movies fine. my brothers 600 sager plays dvds great and AVI;s.

any more ideas?

 

It ought to work fine try playing it with vlc player
www.videolan.org/ maybe it's just codecs missing
the other answer is a format and reinstall using the format option not the quick format option
i had avi's playing on a 133 mhz with just 128 of ram

 

i got to working...I think it was a audio and video driver issue. also..when i changed my desktop to 16bit instead of 32bit it made a hige diff. i am still getting 512 ram though.

Thank you all for all your help...I appreciate it..

Derek

 

that Mediaplayer "VLC Media Player" works GREAT. I use 20%LESS of my cpu usage..Thanks for the tip!!!

Derek