Sunday, October 9, 2011

Fixing Choppy Video Playback (Vostro 1100 & XP)

ISSUE: Windows and VLC playback is suddenly choppy on a Dell Vostro 1100 Laptop. 

This issue arises after playing a DVD that reports errors and Windows reverts back to PIO Mode (slower) which it deems more reliable than the more common DMA mode.

SOLUTION: You may be able to simply change the setting by going to Settings-> Control Panel-> System-> Device Manager-> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers-> Primary IDE Channel-> Advanced Settings and checking to see if it has defaulted to PIO. Changing this back to DMA may resolve your problem however I found otherwise. If this doesn't fix the issue, right click on the Primary IDE Channel and remove it or both if more than one is listed. The system will auto reinstall them.

Reboot and attempt playing a commercial DVD. This should resolve your choppy video playback problem.

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