Been trying to solve a stutter / pausing during playing of audio visual on my Sony laptop for a couple of weekends. Doesn't matter if it an iTunes file or Youtube. It even will do it during boot up. Did all the usual scans defrags etc. Traced it down to the average queue length being too long. No errant process's identified in Task Manager. I upgraded to 2Gig worth of RAM (for some reason only 1 Gig is showing) which helped but didn't eliminate it. An interesting observation is that when I play a youtube (Top Gear CLK63 Black Series) the longer I play it the average queue length drops to an acceptable level.
So should I:
a) Reformat my harddrive (Only using a 25G of with 43G available)
b) Buy a new computer because the drive in this one is shot.

Its a Sony VAIO 1.73Mhz laptop

Thanks in advance.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

First check out your computer's specifications and see if it can take 2GB of RAM - it should do but you never know...

Look in the BIOS to see if it is "seen" there

Unless Windows (which is **** by the way) is using loads swap space then the HDD becomes more of a problem.

I'd be blaming:-

1) Windows
2) RAM
3) Network

Are you by any chance using a wireless network?

If so try it with a hard wire (UTP) and see if that helps

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

This is an interesting comment. I had discounted the wireless impact because I was getting skipping on boot up and playing itunes off my harddrive but my girlfriend is not getting skipping when ads come up before a video I will hook up to a direct wire and see what happens.

Thanks!

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

Gave the wired connection a try. Audio / Video still skips.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

How old is this thing? Laptops are not known for coming with amazing graphics capability, it might just have too slow of graphics to handle modern video apps and such.

Stuttering can be various issues....a good way to test if its windows is to boot into a Linux Live-CD or such and see if you can use/play stuff in that without issue.

__________________
-diesel is not just a fuel, its a way of life-
'15 GLK250 Bluetec 118k - mine - (OC-123,800)
'17 Metris(VITO!) - 37k - wifes (OC-41k)
'09 Sprinter 3500 Winnebago View - 62k (OC - 67k)
'13 ML350 Bluetec - 95k - dad's (OC-98k)
'01 SL500 - 103k(km) - dad's (OC-110,000km)
'16 E400 4matic Sedan - 148k - Brothers (OC-155k)

How long has it been since you defragged your hard drive?

Is your antivirus up to date? you may have a malware that's eating up resources.

Just a couple of ideas.

__________________
Remember, it's not just a car. It's an Adventure.

Did you check the RAM in the BIOS?

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Yes. It is now reading 2GB I didn't have one of the chips seated properly. The stuttering is still there even on boot up and on my Top Gear test case.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

I have defragged it several times including last night before I went to bed.

I had Norton which I removed and replaced with Microsoft Security Essentials and have run several scans. I suppose I could try downloading AVG and see if it finds anything.

I pulled up the task manager and deleted every nonessential process that showed up in addition to turning off everything thing in the startup menu.
I was down to about 20 process including the task manager and about 9 svchost which I read wasn't unusual for a laptop.

I wish I understood computers better to be able to pinpoint the problem. I don't mind buying a new computer if it's a hardware problem this is about 5 years old I just don't want to if it just some piece of software that is screwing things up.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

My laptop used to run my You Tube test video fine and it is stuttering on boot-up. I read up a little on your Linux Linve-CD suggestion. Can you recommend something specific that I can download and try. Seems like there is a lot out there to pick from.

Thanks

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

For easy use Linux - go for Ubuntu

As you already have Windows installed you could get Ubuntu (or any other Linux software) to partition a bit of your hard drive and turn your laptop into a dual boot system.

Take a look at openSuse too - especially with the kde desktop

Most releases have a "live CD" that allows you to see what it looks like before you install - you could even try your Top Gear videos with the software running from your CD

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Did a restore tonight to a couple of weeks ago and it seems to be working now.
So what happened? I don't understand. I did another virus scan last night and it found nothing.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic

Check windows updates - do you need to add some more now? If you do may be you could repeat the problem by adding them?

__________________
1992 W201 190E 1.8 171,000 km - Daily driver
1981 W123 300D ~ 100,000 miles / 160,000 km - project car stripped to the bone
1965 Land Rover Series 2a Station Wagon CIS recovery therapy!
1961 Volvo PV544 Bare metal rat rod-ish thing

I'm here to chat about cars and to help others - I'm not here "to always be right" like an internet warrior



Don't leave that there - I'll take it to bits!

Ok hopefully this is the last chapter in this story. So after I did the restore I tried doing some basic tuning including defragging my hard drive and the defrag software would no longer work. So I reinstalled Norton 360 and reinstalled service pack 3. Then the stuttering problem came back. I attempted multiple restores, none of which worked. I unstalled Norton 360 thinking that was getting in the way. My computer runs so much faster without it. I attempted the restore to no avail. So then last night before I went to bed I played a hunch. I had read that the stutterring problem could be related to the IDE driver. When I had pulled mine in the past it said everything was ok and being a novice I was afraid to uninstall it, but last night I thought what the hell. I unistalled it and now my computer works as it should. During a chkdsk 8 bad segments were flagged. I'm thinking that my hard drive is on the way out. I installed AVG as my antivirus software. We'll see how that goes.

Thanks again.

__________________
MBlovr
'59 180 Dad's original
'59 180 Dad's 2nd one
'67 250SE Dad's last one
'59 220 SE My first one
'62 220SE Coupe second one
'89 190E 2.6 5spd third one
'06 E350 4matic (sold)
'10 E350 4matic