PC question for people who know computers

[Estranged Reality]

Okay, this is sort of a detailed story, but here goes.

Half a year ago I purchased a dual processor 300 GB Windows XP Media Center computer. It's very nice and I had no problelsewhere.

The Media Center interface can be launched and from there I can watch TV, DVDs, etc. in fullscreen with a DVD player-style interface. It's very unique.

I have two DVD drives - E and F labels for them (not that it really matters what they're labeled).

Well anyway, I used to playback DVDs on the E drive, but recently when I try to do this the playback for the DVDs are very "choppy." The audio is fine but the framerate for the video itself seelsewhere to "skip" - like what would happen if another process was running in the background and hogging the memory.

I've tried shutting down all programs and I've tried playing DVDs in very simple DVD programs but it still does this.

HOWEVER, when I play DVDs with the F drive it works fine. No choppy playback at all.

So, I figured my E drive was just not as powerful as the F drive.

However, when I now try to watch TV or DVDs in Windows Media Center it does the exact same thing. I have to watch TV in a small window - whenever I switch to fullscreen it gets choppy.

Any ideas on why this would happen?

I would guess it has something to do with either too much memory being used (which is weird since it has so much extra space), a bad update I installed, some faulty program that is messing up my playback, or my monitor not being able to handle it. But the problem occurred fairly recently, and it only affects Media Center and the E drive playback, not the F drive, which works fine.

I used to be able to do these things with no problelsewhere. I've tried removing programs and clearing up hard drive space, but it still doesn't work like it used to. Any ideas?

Any ideas?

[Max™]

Check to see if DMA is enabled for that drive.

Okay - bear with me here, I just moved to Vista so I'm doing this from the top of my head.

Right click My Computer > Properties.

Go to the device manager, find IDE Controllers and expand the menu. Look at the Primary and Secondary IDE channels in that list, right click on one and click Properties.

You are looking for a page that will have "Auto Detect" as one of the options. Basically in the other drop-down menu, you will see PIO Mode or UDMA Mode 'x'. Set everything you can from PIO mode to DMA mode.

[Estranged Reality]

Check to see if DMA is enabled for that drive.

Okay - bear with me here, I just moved to Vista so I'm doing this from the top of my head.

Right click My Computer > Properties.

Go to the device manager, find IDE Controllers and expand the menu. Look at the Primary and Secondary IDE channels in that list, right click on one and click Properties.

You are looking for a page that will have "Auto Detect" as one of the options. Basically in the other drop-down menu, you will see PIO Mode or UDMA Mode 'x'. Set everything you can from PIO mode to DMA mode.

Thanks, I followed those steps.

Unfortunately, it seelsewhere DMA is already listed for both IDE controllers! So I'm at a loss again.