i bought a new laptop w/ vista, 1G of RAM, roughly. it's enough to run Vista, basically. however, when i play music from my external hard drive, it nips in and out sometimes. actually, pretty often. does i needz more RAM? plz to halp. i do not understand puter lingo so much. thx.

10/19/2007 10:02:54 PM

jiggle the handle

10/19/2007 10:03:30 PM

get rid of vista.

10/19/2007 10:09:10 PM

I'll need a tutorial as to how to get rid of Vista, and ultimately a new Op system for free. . presumably XP.

10/19/2007 10:09:58 PM

yea, it's prolly the ram.

close all programs except for your music player and see if the problem persists. if it doesn't then you definitely need more ram. if it still nips in and out then you most likely need more ram

10/19/2007 10:09:58 PM

delete your megabites

10/19/2007 10:10:34 PM

cheers !, G.

10/19/2007 10:10:37 PM

I have a very bare minimum of programs running as it is.

^who in the fuck poured those?

[Edited on October 19, 2007 at 10:21 PM. Reason : cheers, btw.]

10/19/2007 10:11:06 PM

Vista is utter shit. You should have waited another year for them to issue all of the necessary patches and fixes. My advice: get rid of Vista and replace it with XP.

10/19/2007 10:30:43 PM

you're the 3rd person to say so.

who can do this for me? plz.

10/19/2007 10:47:18 PM

clearly





someone has stoled ur megahurtz

10/19/2007 10:54:23 PM

just install the linux mp3

10/19/2007 10:56:38 PM

buffer the music/hdd more?

10/19/2007 11:07:54 PM

I kinda like Vista now that I am used to it. Just buy another 1G card.

10/20/2007 12:45:41 AM

operating systems are a bitch compared to applications

10/20/2007 12:46:53 AM

Well... First I'd check hardware problems - tight connections, etc etc.
Second, try using a different player - not sure if WinAmp is out for Vista yet, but it's far superior to any bundled software you may be using.
-WinAmp has controls to manipulate how much is buffered. If I remember correctly it used to be like 0.5 seconds for local files (this is how they fade them in/out, etc) - in the settings bump that up to 1.5 or 2 seconds.

Third, upgrade hardware

Fourth, last ditch effort (although probably the BEST fix) - go back to XP. I say this just because reloading can be a huge pain, especially with programs and stuff you already have loaded on there. And if you're going back to XP, why not just try out Ubuntu or something.

(you can also use a linux live CD (Ubuntu or other) to see if it's some kind of hardware malfunction)

Just some ideas....

10/20/2007 12:53:20 AM

just get more ram

10/20/2007 12:56:08 AM

does it also fade in and out when playing music from the internal hard drive?

if not, could be the connection.

if so, that's another can of worms

10/20/2007 12:58:37 AM

Is this a dual or quad core? What model processor? This matters because of the differing memory controllers - depending on your answer I would or wouldn't recommend getting more RAM. For certain processors 1GB is going to be plenty - for others not so much.

[Edited on October 20, 2007 at 1:00 AM. Reason : Example would be "Core 2 Duo" or "Opteron"]

10/20/2007 12:59:38 AM

^^^^ i'm runnin regular winamp on vista, works great.

10/20/2007 1:00:18 AM

pentium dual core

10/20/2007 1:02:31 AM

you said it's an external usb drive? dump your music to your lappy drive, and it won't skip...how old is the external, and is it possible that the external case is usb 1.0 or 1.1 ? is it possible that your laptop only has usb 1.0 or 1.1, or it has it but is not installed correctly.

10/20/2007 1:02:59 AM

HP dv6000?

10/20/2007 1:03:20 AM

yeah, i may as well dump it to my internal. i've got 160G of storage on here, I think. only about 76G of music.

10/20/2007 1:04:53 AM

What XSMP said is also very possible - either your shit isn't set up to handle USB2.0 or your device isn't 2.0.. I could see that causing a problem.

Eh you should be fine with 2x512 on a dual core.. Don't go out and buy another stick it's probably not going to fix your problem.

[Edited on October 20, 2007 at 1:06 AM. Reason : device]

10/20/2007 1:05:38 AM

werd up i got the same computer.


i recommend winamp if you want to play music on your comp btw, don't bother with wmp. i use itunes only to organize music on my ipod.

[Edited on October 20, 2007 at 1:07 AM. Reason : it's not because of any 1.1 error]

10/20/2007 1:06:25 AM

my xhd is USB 2.0

10/20/2007 1:08:07 AM

check you drivers/hardware, and in the meantime copy over some music to the internal, you'll be fine.

10/20/2007 1:09:33 AM

nm only 100G internal

10/20/2007 1:12:48 AM

copying everything at once would take all night, just copy over enough to fill your ipod, or 20gb whichever comes first.

10/20/2007 1:17:09 AM

Quote :

"1G of RAM, roughly. it's enough to run Vista, basically."

not so much, no. Vista is such a fat hog 2 gb is really the practical minimum.

10/20/2007 11:03:19 AM

get rid of vista, or get moar ram

10/20/2007 11:09:16 AM

Even if the drive is 4200rpm it shouldn't skip like that. If the drive was made in the last 5 years chances are the internal buffer is twice as big as any mp3 you're playing.

I'd venture that its a problem with your USB. If you have any other usb devices connected or doing stuff while stuff skips, try unplugging everything but the drive (including external mouse/keyboard) and see if it still does it. Try other ports as well.

Maybe see if theres a driver update for your chipset.

[Edited on October 20, 2007 at 11:14 AM. Reason : .]

10/20/2007 11:14:29 AM

^ i said as much already - joel isn't a bargain user either, as far as i can tell, so i assumed his drive was a 7200rpm ide in a usb 2.0 case. question is, is the usb wire* usb2.0, are his drivers installed correctly for his motherboard, more specifically his usb drivers - does it happen all the time, or only wit certain files, or certain moments, what player is he using, is he running a firefox browser that's been up for a day and a half, that is using a lot of ram, was his virus scanner scanning, was windows update doing something, was he using the drive for something else at the same time?

10/20/2007 1:13:46 PM

some ideas
----------

-check bios and make sure all usb stuff is enabled
-test the usb device in a different port
-test it as the only usb device and see if that works



there are lots of vista haters out there because (in my opinion) microsoft forced vista onto all the new laptops and made us all beta test a new OS... but i can guarantee you that once a service pack (ie SP1) comes out for vista, it will be great.

all the people telling you to get rid of vista and throw xp on there... they probably couldnt do it and have the system last more than 10 minutes. the xp installation disk doesnt come with the drivers for lots of hardware in most new laptops (most notably the hard drives, wireless network adapters, intel graphic chipsets, SATASCSIIDERPM, etc etc)

i actually took mine down to XP on my (gateway mt6705) dual 1.6ghz 1GHZram laptop to test this theory



but it ended up not being worth the trouble, so i did a system restore back to vista. plus taking a licensed copy of vista off and putting on a pirated copy of xp is just silly.

10/20/2007 1:41:14 PM