Possibly A Tip Of The Day: Solving A Stuttering Problem in Vista Media Center

It was a lovely fall day today, 70 degrees F, no wind and not a cloud in the sky. What better way to spend it then trouble shooting a rotten stuttering problem that promises to consume you until you do a complete install from scratch. Let me break it down for you.

Problem:

A video would stutter to the point of being unwatchable when the VMC GUI was up (FF or info pop up). After a minute the video would calm down and would be watchable but I would notice that high motion scenes and pans were ugly and stuttering.

Setup:

Q6600

2600XT

3GB Ram

Intel P35 mobo 

Dual CableCards

Cat 8.9

Solution:

I unistalled the Catalyst 8.9 after the reboot I went to Windows Update and grabbed the latest updates that just came out. While I was in there, I noticed that Windows Update was prompting me to install a video driver for my video card. Peh, I say to myself, the video card drivers are always out of date. After ignoring that, I installed the Cat 8.10 and noticed the stuttering remained EXACTLY the same. AFter much cursing, I decided to install the Windows Update driver. Wouldn’t you know it, it WORKS. No stutter :).

There is my story of eliminating stuttering. Next step. VMC Netflix on the Extender.