AVCHD Video Playback on Sony Vegas/PMB Causing Blue Screen - HELP!

[dakicka]

I'm having a nightmare of an issue. I've had my Dell Latitude E6400 for almost 3 years and it's been the BEST computer purchase I've ever bought. It is fully loaded with everything... except a stand-a-lone video card. I never thought much about it because I don't play games, but now I am in the process of doing small edits of HD Video (it is transferred in from my Sony HD Camcorder which put the video in AVCHD Format) then it is loaded up to software called PMB which is basically a media player that works with these big files. From there I view the HD Videos, delete ones I don't want anymore and then drag over files over to Sony Vegas to slice them up and then save so I can publish to my YouTube page.

Well the problem I've been having is that when attempting to view the videos whether in the PMB media player, or edit in Sony Vegas, or just play the HD videos in general- after a certain amount of time I get a blue screen (no white text - just blue) and then I have to manually shut down my laptop. I notice when playing HD video that my CPU resources go from about 8% idle to all the way up to 65-75% constantly while playing videos and even spikes up to 85% sometimes! The fan then comes on and sooner or later I will get the blue screen. It also appears the system heats up quickly with the fan and then I get the blue screen. Also, I did a test with non-HD video, and played continuously for 6 hours with WMV formatted videos versus the AVCHD big HD files and it worked fine, and took up about 1/4 of the system resources. But I can't wait HD videos for more than about 30 minutes or else I get the blue screen.

So after countless hours on the phone with Sony support they've come to the conclusion that my video card is not sufficient. We also confirmed that there are no driver issues and all the Dell drivers are up to date for video and chipset. I also spoke with Dell and they believe it is an issue with the integrated video card versus a stand-a-lone Video Card such as NVidia that is an option on my laptop.

It seems like possibly because I have the Intel integrated graphics w/ express card it may not be sufficient to handle HD video? Could this be the case? I know I probably can't just go get another video card since I believe this is the integrated Intel chipset which is part of the motherboard and that means I would have to replace the motherboard. Right now it seems my options are to figure out a way to 'work around' this issue, or go buy a new unit. I like the Dell Latitude and would probably get the same one again with a better video card but before doing so I want to make sure that really is the issue. It would be disastrous to go purchase a new laptop and then find out I still have the same issues even with a better video card...

Any advice would be MUCH appreciated!

[Baldrick]

Please don't cross post. I removed your other thread.


What is the bsod error? Try google it.

[dakicka]

There is no blue screen error code. There is not normal white text presented like a typical blue screen. It is just all blue with no words and then I have to manually power off...