I replaced a working DVD with a new LiteOn dual-layer DVD. Now the same DVD's that played on the old player have a stutter sound. I believe what is really happening is that the video is skipping and the sound is following. My system is Windows XP Home Edition SP2 running on a 2.20 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 with 1280 megabytes installed memory in a ASUS A8V motherboard.

Check if UltraDMA is enabled for the drive by going to device manager, opening the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and double-click the IDE channel that the DVD is on, should be secondary IDE. Under the Advance settings tab, check what the transfer mode is. It should be set as "DMA mode if available".

If that doesn't work, then maybe your not using a 80-pin IDE ribbom cable which is required for the higher transfer rates.

Thanks for your reply. Yes I did check to see of "DMA mode if available" was checked, for both primary and secondary. This is the first thing several people have asked me to check. I did check the cable - it is 80 conductor. What next?

Besides playback, is the DVD drive working normally for other functions? Reading a disc? Burning?

Check that the DVD is set as Master on the Secondary IDE. If the DVD jumper is set as Cable Select (CS), then switch it to Master instead. If you have a Slave device on the Secondary, disconnect it and try the DVD playback again.

Default BIOS settings will automatically determine the DVD transfer mode, so check that it is indeed detected as DMA and not PIO.

Re-install the old DVD drive and see if it works as before.

Install the new DVD drive in another PC (perhaps a friend's PC, etc.) and check for playback performance.

Try a different Media Player, such as Media Player Classic or VLC.