Okay. Breaking it down...

Every time I run a video file, the video and my computer both are lucky to break 2fps. Task Manager shows the media player in question eating up 50% of the CPU in Processes, which translates to all of one core and none of the other in Performance. The sound of the video runs as normal.

Happens with all video files types I've tried - mkv, avi, wmv, mpg, flv. And with every media player, too. VLC Media Player, Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, the lot.

Stalker and Dead Space, the games I've played since this cropped up, both work completely fine, including the starting cinematics. Music files play without any problems. Youtube videos are likewise fine.

Tried it with no codec packs, just K-Lite, just CCC, and with both. No difference in any of the combinations. Tried rebooting several times. Installed the latest graphics card drivers. Run a virus scan, nothing popped up.

Any ideas what the hell's going on here?

 

How new is your computer? What are your computer specs?

I'm just going to throw this into the window, but maybe a piece of hardware or software is causing problems with videos being played. Or perhaps the CPU is doing something fishy when you try.

 

Also, when was the last time you did a reformat?

 

Computer's brand spankin' fresh-out-of-the-box new. Like a fortnight old. Movies worked fine when I tested it out earlier. And I refuse to believe that a bloody reformat should be a regular part of computer maintenance.

Problem turned out to be corrupted graphics card drivers - somehow got fucked up to the point that replacing them with a newer version didn't fix it. Ended up having to uninstall the drivers, scrub every last trace of them from the system, and then install a slightly older version of the drivers I got off a friend.

 

You're welcome.

Speaking of which, I'm having some odd problems with my vid card myself. I have a Ge-Force 8800gts. This problem has never shown itself before, but maybe you can shed some advice on it.

A few weeks ago, I was running 2 games at once, and I'd alt-tab out of them a few times to talk to people while playing the game, then all of a sudden when I try to go back into the game, the graphics go all funky on me, and it wouldn't change unless I restarted it with the button. Then when I went into Windows, it still did it. So I went into Safe-Mode, and had to change the resolution.

I formatted my PC at least 3 times this week, and whenever I try to go into the screen resolution it was in before 1280x1024, it would give me some fucked up screen with the graphics with all these messed up colors, kinda like a really bad static tv channel, except you can't see anything behind the static. Well, okay, maybe not static looking, but the graphics look like they were almost smeared, I guess. So I'm on 1024x768 right now, and it hasn't screwed up since I formatted it 3 times this week. Any ideas?

 

What games are you running? Also, are you running Vista? What Richard described reminds me of what happen when I tried to run Fallout 1 in Vista.

 

No, I use XP. I won't even go near Vista.

I was running NeverWinter Nights, and CS:S, I believe were the two games. And I think it also did the same thing even with only 1 game running as well. But it hasn't really done it since I formatted my computer a week ago. But it still won't let me go into the resolutions I had it set on while it did this.

 

More importantly, what media player do you use, and do you have the most recent version + patches?