All Audio and Video Stuttering/Glitching/Grinding in Slow Motion on All Players

newmy51

Distinguished
Mar 22, 2013
9
0
18,510
ThinkPad W520 4282-4YU
Core i7-2860QM @ 2.5GHz
12GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro 2000M
Win 7 64-bit SP1

Purchased pre-owned, has been absolutely nothing but trouble from the beginning. First attempts to reformat did not take. Determined 500GB HDD was busted. Replaced with 120GB SSD from another ThinkPad. Expected a machine with these specs to purr with multiple tab browsing, hi def video playback, Photoshop CS6 & Lightroom, gaming, win explorer navigation and general multitasking. Instead it putts, sputters, and spits out about 6 BSODs per day, most of them blaming Peer Guardian and ntoskrnl.exe. PG was removed weeks ago, and the screens are about 25% less frequent. Unlocker also causes instant crashing. Browsing is slow, file and folder navigation is slow, assigning higher process priority in task manager does not help, neither does turning off seemingly unnecessary services. A good 50% of Lenovo's bundled and built-in utilities and doo dads have randomly stopped working (battery meter doesn't show remaining %, no more access manager, hotkeys/fn keys and volume adjustment buttons intermittently stop working). The list goes on and on.

The latest and greatest grievance, and the one I'd like fixed with the TH community's gracious help, is the following:

All audio and video sporadically lag, glitch and sputter in sync with what appears to be fluctuations in CPU usage, though even with all non-Microsoft services turned off and all programs closed, the problems persist, if only to a lesser degree. Video and audio in browsers, offline media played from one or more drives, possibly even windows sounds are all subject to this equally. Sometimes it has the appearance of the video and audio kind of grinding in slow motion, other times the audio grinds while the video plays at normal speed, desyncing the two until a random hiccup quickly fast-forwards the audio up to the current frame.

HD Tune tells me my 1TB UltraBay drive and internal SDD are in perfect health. MemDiag comes up clean as well. This machine has stumped me to the point of throwing it on Craigslist as an 'As-is' for 50% of the price I paid for it. I may hang onto it and reformat with linux, but my hopes aren't high. I will be the first to admit my ignorance of some user error causing all or most of these problems, but I've tried everything I know how to and nothing's worked.

Willing and able to provide any additional info upon request, and/or run any additional diagnostics/scans.

Any and all help greatly appreciated.

-Danny
 
Video lag, glitch sputter:
A. The internet service is defective. Stop blaming the computer.
Don't expect anything but a single wired connection to stream video correctly. Wireless internet, thru a router will probably NEVER stream video correctly. CONNECT directly to the modem, a single hard wired connection, and test again.
B. The processor is overloaded with junk programs, or malware.

Save your personal files to a back up.
Completely reformat the drive and load a fresh operating system.
Then replace your files from a back up.

The problem is, probably a corrupt operating system, probably infected with double trojan worm virus.
(these DTW viruses are running wild on Craigs List)
AND several of these new viruses CANNOT be detected, or eliminated.
The new viruses disable the antivirus and firewall. They disable system restore,,,etc...with no problem at all.

There is NO "repair." There is NO "fix it" tool that can make it work right.
So FACE up to it. Save your personal files, and erase the drive completely.
Reload a fresh OS. Then reload all the latest drivers.

AND to prevent this in the future:
1. Use ONLY professional all in one antivirus. NOT "free" security downloaded from the internet. I recommend you buy and use Kaspersky.
2. NEVER load "free" tools (like driver sweeper, etc) from the internet. "Free" tools are a scam and will never help your system run "better."
3. When receiving messages from Craigs list, NEVER click on photos, attachments or links, in the emails.

AND if you have done what I told you, and your system still has problems, you probably have a defective motherboard, etc...

Clearing the POWER problems:
This causes you to have problems on some computers. You expect high performance and you are not getting it. OR You system freezes…
If you are on laptop battery power, these high performance settings cause the battery to run down faster. These settings are really for high performance desktop PC.

A. When these power saver features are enabled, it causes a bunch of problems.
B. Windows shuts down your system to sleep, hibernate, standby, etc..etc...
C. After shutting down system to "save power" the system malfunctions when you try to wake it up again...and locks up, freezes, etc...
It locks the mouse, it locks the keyboard, it shuts off the display, and locks out the hard drive, it shuts off USB devices, etc...etc...
D. This will cause you to pull your hair out, and go to the funny farm...(those nice young men in their pretty white coats)
E. Make it stop, please make it stop.
F. Shut off all these "features" and USE your computer for a change):

Click Start, Click Control Panel,
Look at the top of the window, in the path bar you see “control panel >”
Click on “>” (in the path bar) now click on “all control panel options.”
(This will open up all the hidden controls available)
Click Power Options
click on the arrow to “show other plans”
Check the Box that says "high performance"
Click (in high performance) "change plan settings"
Turn off display: set to NEVER
Put the computer to sleep: set to NEVER
Click: Change advanced plan settings
Scroll down the list: Click on the + signs to expand the choices for each item on the list.
Require a password on wake up: set to NO
Hard disk: turn off the hard disk: set to NEVER
Wireless adapter settings:
Sleep: set to NEVER
Allow Hybrid sleep: set to NEVER
Hibernate after: set to NEVER
Allow wake timers: set to disable
USB settings:
USB selective suspend setting: set to NEVER
Power Buttons and lid:
Power button action: Setting: set to shut down
Sleep Button Action: set to: do nothing
PCI Express:
Link State Power Management, Setting: OFF
Processor Power Management: Minimum state (set to) 7%

System Cooling Policy: setting: Active
Maximum State (set to) 100%
Display
Turn off display after: setting: NEVER (turning off display automatically can cause freezing also)
Turn off the monitor power manually, when you want it off. Don’t use the auto monitor turn off.
Multimedia Settings:
When Sharing Media: Setting: Prevent idling to sleep
When Playing Video: Setting: Optimize Video
Click APPLY
Click OK

Open the bios set up and make sure "cool and quiet" is OFF. (AMD)
If there is a power saver or a "quiet mode" in the bios, shut it off...
There may be a performance setting in the bios setup you have...make sure it's cranked up to max.
in the bios, see that the allocation for video, if available, is maxed.

Now open the hardware manager profiles...
click start
click computer
click system properties
click device manager
double click on mice and other pointing devices
right click on HID compliant mouse
left click on properties
click on the power management tab
UN-check the box that says: "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." (there is now NO check mark in this box)
click OK

Now repeat this procedure for all mice, monitors, keyboards, and ALL USB ports on the device manager list.

You must open ALL the devices one at a time, as above, and turn off the power saver, for each device.

NOW turn all the security back ON. NOW open your security antivirus. Make sure the antivirus is set to "gaming mode." Or "multimedia mode."
This prevents the security updating from interrupting your game / multimedia priority.
IF the security does not have "gaming mode" or "multimedia mode" get different security.
IF you are using "free" security downloaded from the internet, get rid of it NOW.
Use ONLY professional all in one security. DO NOT load multiple mismatched security programs, which conflict with each other.
DO NOT load free tools into your system such as: "driver sweeper" or any of that "free" goofy stuff.

 

newmy51

Distinguished
Mar 22, 2013
9
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18,510
soundguruman

I resent your ALL CAPS insinuations that I suffer from one or more forms of computer illiteracy. There appears to be no searchable record of these diabolical "double trojan worm viruses" you speak of, which quickly throws the remainder of your unmistakably grumpy email into question. You have done a great deal of assuming in this reply of yours. Allow me to help you by clarifying a few things:

1. The title of this post is "All Audio and Video Stuttering/Glitching/Grinding in Slow Motion on All Players." Therefore, option A, "The internet service is defective. Stop blaming the computer." is not advice, only evidence of poor reading comprehension on your part. I mention elsewhere that both online and offline media (aka media files on my computer which require no internet connection to view) suffer equally from this issue. It is a false dichotomy to then assume that, if not a connectivity issue, my "processor is overloaded with junk programs, or malware." You could have asked for a list of processes running on my machine, or any additional scans/diagnostics as mentioned at the end of the post, but you have instead decided to settle on a rather arbitrary diagnosis all on your own. Similar "then it must be your [enter computer term here]" determinations pepper the remainder of your post without any attempt to show causality or correlation between the things going wrong on my machine and the things you've decided are responsible.

2. AV, malware and/or heuristics software, and any software for that matter, needn't cost money to be trustworthy and effective. Malwarebytes, Spybot S&D and ClamWin are my tools of choice. All three are free, two of which are routinely used and endorsed by the whole of the Major Geeks support team, whose responses to my technical support questions have a distinctly less antagonistic ring to them. That you would indict all free software as harmful, worthless or "goofy" in a single stroke is perhaps the single clearest indication of your "experience" with computing.

3. The issues stated occur regardless of power settings. Whatever Windows and/or Lenovo utilities might scale down performance for power saving have been set to max performance from the day the OS was installed.

4. Laptops don't have monitors. They have displays, which don't typically have independent power buttons.

I could go on, but I know enough to simply take my issue elsewhere. In the words of Jim Downey, "I award you no points, and may god have mercy on your soul." Good day, sir.