Wierd playback problem

I seem to have a general problem with playback of videos. Every some time it fast forwards the video a few seconds as if trying to catch up (even though there's no lag to indicate the need to catch up with the playback), and quite often the video freezes just before the end for a few seconds, then continues normally. At first I thought it was just bad files, but then I noticed that Real Player does the fast forward thing to just about every file, even old ones that I know are ok. Quick time does the freezing thing to pretty much every file, and while Windows Media Player is the most stable one, I did get some freezes from it. DVD plays fine, but movie files from cd's still get the same problems. Any idea what might be causing it?

 

Anyone?

 

Could it be the buffer not filling fast enough? Just guessing

 

Ok, what can I do about it?

 

Are you playing streaming video, or something off a CD (or the HD)?

Video can be processor intensive, so what is your CPU, and what is its speed rating?

 

In the WMP options, you can change amount of buffer content and the video acceleration (is yours under full video acceleration, that is recommended) in the perfomance tab

 

The acceleration is at its fullest.
My CPU is AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 2.2 Ghz