computer restarts when watching a movie!

[tomchook]

hey everyone,
I have a new computer (1 year old) with windows xp professional + SP2. I don't know why, but most of the times when i'm trying to watch a movie my computer restarts itself
my player is Media Player Classic (I got it with K-lite mega codec pack 3.7.5, which is the latest version as for now)

What should I do?

[mats.hogberg]

Try VLC. If your computer survives playing movies on VLC, it's a bad codec/codec conflict.
Codec packs are well known to butcher your system, and can well be the cause of your troubles.

/Mats

[tomchook]

I forgot to mention it - I tried VLC and it also crashed.. what else can be done?

[aedipuss]

make sure it's not a hardware/heat problem. put the comp into bios and leave it there on the temp screen for a half hour and see what happens to the cpu temp. then get a ram testing program that boots into dos and stess the memory. finally get a 3d video card testing program and make sure it passes.

[mats.hogberg]

Watch your CPU temp. Some video codecs takes quite some horse power to decode - it could be a CPU temp issue (even if that's more common when encoding).

/Mats

[tomchook]

I ran the 3dmark test, and it immediately crashed like when watching a movie.

Does that means I have a problem with my graphic card? Could it also be a problem of my windows?

[aedipuss]

try installing the most recent driver and see if it helps, but it's most likely an overheating vid card. open up the box and see if the fan on it is working.

[raffie]

Curious to see ppl's responses. I have a similar problem. I have loads of music videos on my HD; lots of them SVCD. Whenever I put a video in queue, the system just flatout cold reboots just before the video in queue starts. Now it never happens with mpeg4-like videos, so I've always gathered its a mpeg2 codec problem. Haven't find a solution tho...
I have Vista and use Media Player 11 - oh yea btw I never ever touch codec packs.

[redwudz]

raffie, I don't much trust WMP11. Try VLC. That may at least isolate the problem. Vista U is a bit different from XP, in that includes a MPEG-2 codec. If your MPEG-2 codec is corrupted, you can probably delete it and replace it with a different MPEG-2 codec. Or maybe replace or repair the WMP11 player, if Vista will let you.

MPEG-2 doesn't take much CPU power to display, at least compared to most MPEG-4 codecs, so I doubt it's an overheat problem.

[harrisonford]

If all else fail to play try these two players.

Media Player 6.4 http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

or second I use alot it KMPlayer http://www.download.com/The-KMPlayer/3000-13632_4-10659939.html

I use these, they will nearly paly anything. Good Luck

[Soopafresh]

Open the case and blow out the dust with a can of compressed air.