i need help with choppy movies and stuff

[clueless me]

Kay, to start off I am not a computery person at all, so I may seem stupid, but its because I am.

Now here is my problem, my lap top is just over a year old and when I try to watch video on it, or have a webcam conversation with people over msn the video is all choppy, it will pause, or really slow down then get really fast to catch up, or just skip forward to catch up to the sound. It is really irritating. It didn't start doing it till this summer and sometimes it will just shut off all on its own which is kinda not fun either, but that doesn't happen often and probably has nothing to do with the video being choppy.

I've deleted stuff to make more room and I now have a ton of free space on my hard drive and it still isn't any better. Oh, plus my hard drive is partitioned (I think that is what it is called) so I am scared to try defragging because I don't know if that will mess anything up.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1150, 2.60 GHz and 256 MB of RAM

I do regular checks for viruses and spyware too so I know that isn't the problem. I don't know what or if I have a video card, or even how to check for one, but my laptop is just however it came, screws still in place, nothing touched.

Please help me, I am clueless about what to do or how to fix it.

Thanx
Karen

 

[SOcRatEs]

Hello! Welcome to TechSpot

Try this link Intel Chipset support
There are some driver updates.
However you may want to check with dell first
pending any warranty issues, installing wrong drivers
can be a real pain.
Dell wont let me in w/o service tag....

G'Luck

 

[clueless me]

updated my driver

I updated the driver and it is still giving me the same problem, my CPU usage goes up to 100% when I'm watching a movie or something like that, can that be part of the problem? And if it is, how would I fix that?

 

[Paragon33]

It may be that UDMA5 has been reset to PIO Only since your CPU is showing 100% usage, or possibly you have no Page File(virtual Memory) I would surmise you are using a version of W-XP, and errors can cause either or both settings to be reset to those results.
To check the first, R.click My Computer and click Properties. Click Hardware/Device Manager and click the plus mark for IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Highlight Primary IDE Channel and R.Click it. Click Properties/Advanced Settings and check that DMA if Available is set in Transfer Mode. If it is, see if it shows a UDMA setting for Current Transfer Mode. If it shows a UDMA setting, then the problem cause lies elsewhere. If the Transfer Mode is set to PIO Only, reset it for DMA if available, then Ok and apply out and reboot with a 15-20 seconds of complete power down. Then go back and check to see what is now set for Current Transfer Mode. If it is now a UDMA setting, well and good. If it is PIO, go back to Device Manager screen, Highlight the Bus Master IDE Controller Line, R.Click it , click Uninstall and confirm it, then reboot to let W-XP put back the Drivers. See if Transfer Mode has reset to DMA if Available with Current Transfer Mode as a UDMA setting. If it is still PIO mode, read this linked article to tweak the Registry. The suggested remedies for W2000 are germain for W-XP also
http://www.techweb.com/winmag/columns/powerw2k/2001/05.htm#udma
If this is too difficult for you, then reinstall W-XP.

 

[clueless me]

checked that

Thank you, I checked the DMA/PIO thing and it was fine, set to DMA or whatever you would call it. So that isn't the problem I guess. Does anyone know if I can defrag if my harddrive is partitioned? Would that even help me?

 

[Paragon33]

Sure you can defrag both partitions if you want and it is a good idea; but first go to Start/Settings/Control Panel/Internet Options/General and click the Delete Files button. That does not delete your cookies, only the trash files. Everytime you open a web page, it puts in 1-2 cookies and files for every link, photo, ad, etc.. Each of those files will eat up a full allocation unit no matter how tiny they are. Just as a test once on a fresh installation of Windows, I opened just MSN's opening page, then went to the Temporary Internet Files to see the results, 1 cookie and 25 files. It does not take long for a healthy amount of trash to accumulate, and to make things worse they wind up on the most accessible and fastest response part of your Harddrive. If you have not done this for awhile or never, it will take some time to delete this trash. Then if you want to prevent this from happening in future, go to Advanced Tab, scroll down and checkmark "Empty Temporary Internet Files when the browser closes". That again only dumps the trash when you go offline and does not bother the cookies

 

[clueless me]

Still no luck

So I have defraged, deleted all of my temporary internet files and I am still having no luck. If anyone has anymore ideas it would be wonderful!

Thanks for the help
Karen

 

[Paragon33]

Try this
http://www.java.com/en/download/index.jsp

 

[clueless me]

Thanks

Thanks to anyone who gave me help... nothing really worked out so I went home this weekend and had my dad take a look to see what he thought. He ended up pulling out a giant dust ball from the fan and it seems that my computer isnt over heating anymore and so far everything else seems to be cooperating too. So apparently it may have been dust causing my entire problem, doesn't really make sense to me but hey, I'll go with it