Real video puzzler

XP Pro, SP3, current updates, ZA, A^2, Lenovo T60p Dual CPU - 2.1 ghz, flaky operator brain

I'm wishing I never started doing video stuff. I've been after a bug of some kind most of the day. I'll try to describe what I've done, but I may forget something until later.

Yesterday I was watching an old Castle episode on my laptop (from hard drive), when suddenly the player screen just froze in its tracks. I figured the file was short - damaged somehow. But after maybe 10 seconds it started up again, picking up play about that many seconds past where it stopped. That is, apparently play actually continued to run while the screen (and audio as well, BTW) was froze. When the screen came alive again display picked up where play had gotten to by then.

Out of habit I moved the "cursor" back to pick up what I had missed. Strangely it played right through the place where it had stopped displaying. Later the same thing happened, then more. It seemed like the instances were getting closer together, but random.

I rebooted and tried again. It froze in different places.

Thinking the player program had gone buggy, I tried playing the video with other players. They all do the freeze thing randomly. It never stops in the same place twice.

I started shutting things down on the computer thinking there was something elsewhere interfering with the play.

I shut down my desktop carousel, an extension drive, my anti-malware program, my ZA, even my cable modem. I closed down several processes that looked non-essential. The player was working pretty much alone, if you can say that ever.

This just started in the last 2 or 3 days. The newest thing on the machine is AVG Free 2011. I know it sets up all sorts of background stuff running using a pile of auto-start at boot entries, but I watched the installation closely and what I couldn't leave out during installation I removed after it was running. (It really ticks me off when each and every anti-malware company insists on secretly installing stuff like system guards - right on top of anything and everything you already have installed.)

I've wondered if maybe a driver got boogered, but I don't quite see how that would trigger random stops.

I've wondered if uninstalling some video programs could remove something that is vital to playing videos. But...

So if anybody has a clue as to what's going on here I'd like to hear it.

 

I remembered something else.

Before I posted the OP I ran 3 major anti-malware programs on the system. None of them found anything.

One of these was my new installation of AVG Free 2011. I think I'll uninstall it just to see if it might be effecting the issue.

 

I guess this is what they call an FYI post. I uninstalled AVG and haven't gotten any random video pauses since. Go figure. Of course the chances of it happening again just because I posted this are ...

 

Don't know why AVG would cause problems with your computer but if you decide to go with another antivirus instead of AVG I suggest Avast. Avast is just as good, maybe better, and uses far less resources on your computer.

 

Thanks. I don't know why that would happen either, and it isn't too late for it to start doing the pauses again even without AVG. Last night I was watching an episode when it suddenly stopped again. I waited for it to pick up again, but it turned out that the file ended before the episode ended...

Actually I have a subscription AM (anti-malware) that I'm OK with. Emsisoft's Anti-malware. I think I saw it listed here as "A2." It does viruses, cookies, back-door-like system processes and it has a huge list of dangerous or suspicious web sites. With both the processes and web sites it pops up warnings. Web site warnings will time out and auto-block if you ignore them. Suspicious processes halt everything and tell you the name of the program involved. You have a choice of responses to it and an action puts things back in motion.

I add free AM's to the machine if I can turn off their auto starts and system guard dog elements. I run them all manually if things start acting weird. I had Avast at one time. I don't recall why I don't now. MalwareBytes did catch one Trojan my subscription AM missed. SuperAntiApyware is very aggressive with cookies. Actually, AVG Free 2011 had stopped working - showing full scans done in 0 or 1 seconds. I found references to that problem on the internet. AVG seems to ignore the reports, including mine. I guess it may be a bug in AVG that caused it to stop working and caused the video pauses.

 

You may have a broken codec. I had an audio codec stop working for no reason. No reason I could find anyway.

Do you have a codec pack installed on your computer to play video and audio? Maybe it needs to be repaired or reinstalled to make the codecs work again.

Here's a link on majorgeeks to, IMO, the best codec pack out there. Give it a try.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/K-Lite_Codec_Pack_Full_d4844.html

 

Being a bit (lot) single track minded and short in the memory department, I am somewhat (a lot) nonplussed by your question. I do recall that every Tom, Dick and Harry AV app out there insists that you install their codec for their app. Me? I don't even know what a codec is other than some kind of helper, assumedly essential. I probably have 3 or more codecs on my computer. I'd have not a clue how to add one or remove one. It just happens when I install some player.

I'm sure DivX installed one. And maybe VidX. And others.

I'll try, but first I'll wait to see if anyone (You?) tells me to remove those extra _____ codecs! That would be fine with me. I _hate_ the piles of dirty diapers windows leaves lying around your system. I'd be all for using cleaners, except that they remove more than necessary. One reported that it had ripped out 2002 items. Such cleaners don't take into consideration that some apps unexplainably put configurations in temp folders.

I'm guessing that the one you recommended pops up with an installation dialog of some kind.

 

The K-Lite Codec pack (the one I linked you to) will remove the any other codec pack or individual codecs that you may have on your system and replace them with the one in the K-Lite Codec pack before it installs. Installing the K-Lite Codec pack will in no way cause any problems to your computer or conflict with anything on your computer.

For the easiest install of the program I'll link you to the BASIC codec pack from K-Lite. In my previous post I linked you to the MEGA FULL one which has a lot of options and features that I assume you don't need. You just want to play video and the BASIC pack is the way to go for that.

Codecs stand for Compressor Decompressor and they are used in computer audio and video to recognize and play different kinds of audio and video files. I think that's a good, basic definition to explain it.

One more thing. When you install the K-Lite Coded pack there is an option to have all videos played through either Media Player Classic or the regular Windows Media Player. A lot of people chose Media Player Classic but I prefer the regular Windows Media Player. It's up to you.

The install is pretty straightforward and you should have no problems installing it.

http://majorgeeks.com/K-Lite_Codec_Pack_Basic_d5228.html

I hope this helps.

 

OK. Well, actually it's not K.

After uninstalling AVG Free I played videos for a couple days with no pauses. Then it started again - admittedly not nearly as often. That's sort of a relief, not having any idea how AVG could effect it. Also I thought maybe the K'Lite codec had fixed things. Nope. It's now back to frequent pauses.

Interestingly (or not) the CPU sort of goes bananas for a few seconds after the pause is done.

Once it showed up on WMP with the paused screen and the audio going into a loop of 3 or 4 iterations. I need a genius to explain that one.

For that matter, wild theories might be better than nothing.

 

It seems to me that AVG was at least partially responsible for the problem, and to me this makes sense due to how bloated and resource hungry it has become. Since removing it helped, this kind of points to maybe something else is also eating resources. Also, we don't know how much RAM is in the PC. If there's less than 1gb, that could be part of it. If there's a defrag program auto-scheduled, that could be part of it. Extreme fragmentation could be part of it. Even something as innocuous as Windows Automatic Updates can be party responsible if the system is light on RAM.

Does the lag happen only with certain files, or with ALL media files? Have you tried playing the files on a different PC?

 

I'd go with dlb's suggestions. It seems like it's a system problem and not a specific video problem. It could be any number of problems that I won't even try to guess at.

AVG is totally a resource hog. I took it off my other computer, put Avast on instead and I saved 200mbs in RAM.

 

Or, instead of k-lite:

http://alpha.majorgeeks.com/Windows_7_Codec_Pack_d6312.html



Though, mpc-home cinema is awesome, imho.

http://majorgeeks.com/Media_Player_Classic_Home_Cinema_d6213.html

 

It does look like a system thing. Just yesterday I was on UTube and it did several pauses.

I may well dump AVG. I've tamed it somewhat by removing components and autoruns, etc. But it does seem that the pause rate has increased a lot since I reinstalled AVG. I may very well give Avast another shot. It was a long time ago when I tried it. I assume the interface has improved since then.

 

I think you are right. I've pored over the system auto processes to see if I could find a culprit that runs constantly, but I don't really know that much about what to look for.

Right... I have 3 gigs of RAM, so that isn't likely the problem. But I don't have a defrag scheduler and haven't defragged in ages. That's something I can certainly something I can do right away. If the drive wastes time finding the next fragment it could pause things.

It happens with any video I play. I have another laptop 1/4 the memory and less than half the CPU speed. If it runs OK on that I would seem to have a big problem with my Dual CPU x 2.1 ghz machine with 3Gb memory.

 

Ahem. I just had (tiny piece of) a _huge_ enlightenment.

I suddenly remembered recent pauses on other things. Just now while editing a message I was typing and when I read it it appeared that I had left out 3 words. Sometimes the mouse cursor stops in mid-move. I've seen my email program stop loading for a few seconds.

But I'm like you. I'll have to take a shotgun approach to looking for a cure - starting with a defrag.

Of course if some genius sees this bit about system wide pauses, maybe I'll see some suggestions. It may even be good to start a different thread on the "system wide" idea.

 

AVG loads about 10 or 12 processes and services when Windows boots up. My choice of AV is Avira Free Antivirus, and it loads only one or two with Win7 X64 Home Premium (my PC right now shows a single Avira process running - screen shot attached).

Perhaps JimLL could tell us how much memory is installed in the PC, which version of Windows is installed (in case I missed it :-o ), hard drive size and how much free space is available?

 

Thanks. I've been incognito for a while. A dozen local tornadoes knocked out my cable (broadband) for a week.

Memory - 3 Gb. Free drive space - 40 Gb.

 

That, especially the latter part, reads like Windows is having problems controlling the 3rd party graphics driver, maybe it gets stuck in a loop briefly; try updating the chipset and graphics drivers (often Intel on laptops).

 

Thanks, I'll look into that.