DVD Rom Drive freezes when playing avi file off burned DVD rom

[charn]

Hi

This is a strange problem. I have been burning my avi and other media files onto DVD Roms for ages, but I notice that my drives (both TDK DVD Writer and Aopen combo drive which reads DVDs) have problems when it comes to reading even the smallest avi file (even something like 2 Mb), it plays some files some of the time, but after a while or if I touch the sliders on the software player like WMP it will freeze and I have to reboot my PC. Sometimes it freezes the moment I click on an avi file.

The drives can play wma files and rm, but has problems only with avi. And this happens with any software player, whether Windows Media Player or VLC or divxplayer.

Note that the files are playable on my HD and the written file on the DVDR is verified and ok, it can be copied back to the HD, just cannot be played off both drives, which leads me to think it's my OS config.

Does anyone know why?

Sytem info:
Win2000 SP2, HD 120 GB Processor Sempron 2200, Ram 500 Mb


Cheers
CH

[Krispy Kritter]

Is this a recently occuring issue, or has it always been this way?

Could possibly be a codec issue, since other file types play normally. I would expect a hardware or OS issue to affect all files.

[charn]

Hi

Thks for reply. No, it's not a codec issue, it's something to do with reading avi from my Rom drives. Funny thing is only avi files hang my PC when I try to read it off the burned DVD data disc, I can read wmv and rm etc, from the disc.

I know it's not the codec as I can play the same files on my hard disk.

I figure it's either the Windows platform or my drive, but it happens on BOTH my drives so it cant be the hardware. It's not the disc either, as I can copy the file back to the hard disk with no problems.

It somehow is only a problem with playing the file direct from the drive. I saw some suggestion on a board somewhere about changing my Devices setting for IDE drive from PIO to DMA but it didnt help. It still hangs after playing the avi for a while.

I tried another suggestion to use a better video viewer but it didnt make any difference. I tried VLC, Windows Media 9, Divx Player, everything has the same result. I also tried getting the latest firmware for my drives but it didnt help.

My only last resort is to change to WinXP but I really dun want to do that, and I wonder if it will make any difference.

Any suggestions?

Cheers
ch

[Krispy Kritter]

Is it one particular avi file or all of them? Does it do while playing the file or only if you try to FF/RW?

I'm pretty much out of ideas, never seen anything like this before. This is probably one of those issues that will disappear with a fresh install of the OS.