Running movies off of my external HD.. help

I have Windows XP SP 2, my WD 40 gb external HD, and I'm using VLC media player to play the movies. I have defragmented both my internal and external drive.

The movies are skipping when I try to play them. Help?

 

What are your system specifications?
Especially your CPU and RAM capabilities......

I'm assuming the problem is hardware related and extends from resource availability

I had a similar problem when trying to play my home movies on the old P3, 933Mhz with 256mb of ram...it simply couldn't handle it

 

2.8 GHz, 512 RAM

I know it's because of the USB drive, it doesn't seem to transfer fast enough. I had it working at one point a while ago but now nothing I do seems to fix the skipping.

 

mmm. definately not your hardware scenerio!
Its got to be software related...
Why VLC?
I would uninstall and then install media player 10....
See if that works for you?

Just my opinion though!!!