Epia-M1000 Playback problem hardware related?

**Bugbyte** · 11-16-2004, 12:11 AM

Wasn't sure where to post this so I'll try here. I've got an Epia M1000 and it consistently "drops" 1/2 second of mp3 playback every minute or so and seems to be unrelated to the player I'm using.

It happens with Frodoplayer but also with iTunes. In fact FP seems to be better except for the 1/2 second of silence every so often. It's almost like having a CD player that can't quite keep up.

It happens neither more or less frequently with just a single app or multiple apps running. I've had two different disk drives in the car with the same results. Running XP Pro with 512k of RAM and 40 gig hard drive.

Any suggestions are appreciated!

**GruvThang** · 11-16-2004, 12:30 AM

Originally Posted by Bugbyte

512k of RAM

Maybe you need more RAM

What all do you have running in the background?

Free Bump for you

**mi800** · 11-16-2004, 12:33 AM

Originally Posted by GruvThang

Maybe you need more RAM

Why? He's almost there.
The man once said "640K ought to be enough for anybody"

**archimense** · 11-16-2004, 12:35 AM

Are you running WiFi?

**SAScooby** · 11-16-2004, 12:58 AM

You got an antivirus package running ? either that or wi fi something consumes a wee bit more processing power than it should, FP probably uses less resources than the other apps, thats why its not so noticeable in FP

**Bugbyte** · 11-16-2004, 01:25 AM

Originally Posted by GruvThang

Maybe you need more RAM

DOH! Well, of course I meant to say 512mb. But now that you mention it, if you want to see my original 1980's vintage car computer with 32k, look here: Atari 800XL Carputer

But I digress. Someone asked about a WiFi device. I've got a Netgear PCI card in the mix. If that was drawing too much power, how would I know and more importantly, is there anything short of removing it that I could do to fix the problem?

The CPU monitor shows that it is usually at around 10%...

**GruvThang** · 11-16-2004, 01:27 AM

again what is running in the task manager? Processes and Applications please

**Bugbyte** · 11-16-2004, 09:27 AM

I don't have a screen shot but this morning as I drove in to work, I ran the cpu monitor in task manager. There was 1 application running (FP) and 24 processes. There were 5 duplicate instances of "svchost.exe" running, that said various things like "Local" or "Network", etc.

I noticed that without fail, the CPU would peg at 100% when the voice announcement in FP was made. If I changed to a different song, the CPU would momentarily go to 100% and then back to an average of 7-12%. This happened consistently.

Separately, there were instances of dropout when there was no voice announcement with similar characteristics, i.e. CPU would momentarily peg and a dropout would occur, followed by 7-12% CPU usage.

It does look like I have several processes running that I don't really need, like iTunes iPod service and stuff like that. I assume I can control those with msconfig, yes? I'll also try unchecking the voices option on FP but since this problem occurred with other players, I'm not confident it will help. Plus, I think it's pretty cool to have the functions articulated by the computer -it's one of the reasons I have it in there in the first place!

Any suggestions are appreciated.

**archimense** · 11-16-2004, 01:51 PM

Some people have noticed that when your Wifi is looking for access points it will cause the computer to stall momentarily.

Try disconnecting the Wifi, or see if it still happens when you are stability connected to your home access point.