Laptop Hangs whenever playing ANY video

[Mr_Freakybig]

Hello there people of the Digital Video Forums!

I was hoping any of you could help me with a
problem that has been plagueing me for more than a year now.
I tried contacting ati about this but they just said they did
not do laptop support, even though I clicked on it... nice...
I have a P4 2.4ghz with an ATI Mobility radeon 9000, and
ever since a year ago it can't do F all.

Problem:
Starting up any type of Video hangs the laptop completely.
I have to take out the battery, restart, do a consistancy check each time.

What I have tried so far:
At first I tried deleting and reinstalling only the essentials like ffdshow.
None of this has worked. I tried getting rid of catalyst seen as it
did not work at all with this radeon and now got the omega drivers.
I have tried fixing the problem by rolling back to my original
4 yr old ati drivers I got with this laptop. Which somewhat worked.
Video was playable again, except now, when using any 3D application
the thing hangs again.

I just want it working again just the way as I bought it, and start
using my laptop for DVD authoring again.
Does anyone have any clue what to do with this?. Im sure I can get both
3D app and video working together again, because I can still see
video on my old drivers, and still do 3d apps on the omega drivers.
So yeah if anyone has had this problem or knows what it
is, if you help me, you will win 100 internets!

Thanx in Advance

Mr_Freakybig

[anonymez]

welcome to the forum

start by checking whether files play with VLC http://www.videolan.org

[Mr_Freakybig]

Thanx for that. Will check it tonight and post the results.

[Mr_Freakybig]

Just tried VLC Player, and it did not work.

However I did gain some control over the hanging problem,
allthough it was slow and jerky as hell. This carried on even after
I closed it, so I had to restart anyway to get rid of the jerking.

I noticed something when opening a file in VLC player though.
I have a very colorfull wallpaper, and for some reason when I started
the video, part of my wallpaper scrambled up. I could hear the first 3 secs of the sound of the video, then it hung up on me.

Any other suggestions on what this is?

[Mr_Freakybig]

UPDATE:

I have just tried something else:
I can have videoplayback, only when all the HArdware Accelleration
is turned to medium and Direct3D and OpenGL support is turned off.
Video Looks ****ty like this, you can see every block and line, but it plays.
The slider of my hardware accelleration is now set to medium, one setting above this and
this resurrects my problem of a hanging pc when opening video.

please note, I had already tried reinstalling my Radeon completely. No changes.

Any Suggestions?
Thanx.

[anonymez]

ensure you have the latest directx. seems it's a driver issue (though still possibly harware), all i can say is experiment with drivers till you get it right. disabling hardware acceleration is certainly not the solution we're after though

since it's not a codec issue, thread moved to general computing

[Mr_Freakybig]

ah okay thanx for moving it.
I'll try that, even though its what I have been trying for
a year now heheh. I really hope it is just a driver issue.

Here is a summary of how I have things installed now:
- DirectX 9.0c
- Omega Drivers for Ati Cards. Ati Tray 1.0.5.880 2006
- newest ffdshow. Xvid.

If anyone else knows about this problem
and know how to fix it, pls reply .

Thanx for your Help Anonymez

[Mr_Freakybig]

Update:

No luck as yet, maybee I've got some corrupt dll's or something.
OR Windows is messing it up. Or indeed a Hardware issue.
I can't be arsed to buy a whole new card for it just yet which brings
me to my next question:

In the extreme case of me not having any Hardware Acceleration
just to have Video playback, can I run things Like Aftereffects or Tmpeg
or any other video prog with HW Accell turned off?
Its not the ideal situation, but if its possible that would be ok for the time being. Or do I need the hw accelleration.

[anonymez]

can I run things Like Aftereffects or Tmpeg
or any other video prog with HW Accell turned off?

if your PC doesn't hang, guess so. but your system (and editing apps which render video) will be very sluggish, i wouldn't bother.

No luck as yet, maybee I've got some corrupt dll's or something.
OR Windows is messing it up. Or indeed a Hardware issue.

one way to find out, format & perform a clean install

[Mr_Freakybig]

one way to find out, format & perform a clean install

Thats exactly what I did before posting here
Its why I find this weird error so strange.
You clean install it, and it still gives you the hump

How about a different OS version?
I have had SP1 and Home on here so far.

[anonymez]

leaning towards a hardware problem now; if it really was a driver/software issue i would think it not have gone unnoticed by ATI for so long

I have had SP1 and Home

it won't help the situation, but you really should install SP2