DVD Playback doesn't work on modded Cat 4.12?

hitman05 · Jan 11, 2005, 11:06 AM

Hey all

I just reinstalled Windows XP on my laptop recently. It's a slipstreamed Windows XP SP2 Home Edition installation, and everything works perfectly (D3D, OpenGL etc etc) EXCEPT DVD playback. The drivers are the 4.12 Catalyst drivers, but I used Patje's Mobility Modder to install them on the laptop's Radeon IGP320M. Mobility Modder modded the drivers so that they're listed as 340M not 320M, but i believe it's the same chip (320M for Athlon, 340M for Pentium4 notebooks) so that shouldn't be problem. I should also mention that DMA is on for both the HDD and the DVD-ROM.

Anyway, the thing won't play DVD movies. At all. I've tried WinDVD, PowerDVD and VideoLAN decoders. None of them work. The movie begins playing but will invariably crash. What happens with WinDVD is that the movie begins (FBI warnings etc etc) but as soon as there is any scene with animation, it will only play sound while the animation freezes after the first couple of frames. The movie will eventually lock up. With VideoLan it simply locks up as soon as you start the movie. It doesn't even GET to the FBI warnings. PowerDVD plays, but unplayably slowly and it eventually locks up the PC.

What's up? Is there a problem with playing DVDs on the modded drivers?

swimtech · Jan 11, 2005, 12:24 PM

Is WMV acceleration turned off in the ATI control panel? It should be for your unit I believe. It is a check box in the Advanced settings, ATI options tab I believe.

I'm gonna be trying the latest Omega's on the lappy below and WMV is turned off by default in his driverset to accomodate laptop video applications like DVD player software - this has been a issue with the Catalyst drivers for a long time when the stock ATI or Omegadrive driversets have been tried on laptops.

The manufacturer's (of your laptop) release of the drivers generally work fine without modification.

hitman05 · Jan 11, 2005, 01:35 PM

Yes, I actually just tried going back to Catalyst 4.7 drivers. Movies play in VideoLan, but the picture quality with their decoder is pretty poor and the sound skips. With WinDVD I now get the apparently common "Couldn't create Overlay" (or something similar) message and the movie won't play.

Also, when I go into DXDIAG with these modded 4.7s, it says that AGP and Direct3D is not available!

I'm going to try Omegas before going to the (gulp) Compaq ATI drivers.

swimtech · Jan 11, 2005, 02:46 PM

The DXDiag problem you're having is indicative of an incomplete uninstall. Download the Driver Cleaner from this site. Then uninstall the ATI Catalyst driver and the ATI Control Panel using Add/Remove Programs. Then run the Driver Cleaner program before installing the latest Omegas - and good luck!