Macbook (late 2008) freezes when playing videos full screen

I have my new Macbook, and I installed Boot Camp and WinXP Pro SP3. Whenever I play any videos full screen, whether in windows media player or flash based web players, after 10-20 minutes the computer hard freezes, and sound sometimes goes into loop. I've searched multiple forums, and I found suggestions to isntall new video drivers from laptopvideo2go.com with modded inf. I was not able to install them even with modded inf, the setup program finishes and says nothing was installed, and if I try to update drivers through device manager, it's also unsuccesful, and tells me an error has occured.

I was however able to install Dox's custom drivers, and had no freezes with these so far. Also, if instead of using modded info I use nvao.inf that came with Macbooks drivers then I'm able to install all of the drivers from laptopvideo2go.com, and so far the computer doesn't freeze with these, but the problem is, brightness control no longer works. The bar pops up when I press F1/F2 buttons, or do it through the bootcamp icon, but the brightness, or rather backlight, doesn't actually change. It stays at full brightness, and it's so bright that it hurts my eyes.

The freezing is almost certainly a video problem. Your new MacBook has an nVidia GeoForce chipset integrated within. The best bet is to seek out the latest drivers for WinXP from the nVidia website.

In the past, nVidia has been quick to abandon certain chipsets in favor of newer ones and also have focused on Vista rather than XP. I'm not saying that's the case for the chipset your MacBook has but it wouldn't surprise me if there were no updated drivers for XP.

However, it looks like you somewhat solved the problem except now you can't control brightness.

Just a curious question... Why can't you play those same videos from Leopard? You can install Flip4Mac and play WMV files just fine.

Regards.

chscag said:

The freezing is almost certainly a video problem. Your new MacBook has an nVidia GeoForce chipset integrated within. The best bet is to seek out the latest drivers for WinXP from the nVidia website.

In the past, nVidia has been quick to abandon certain chipsets in favor of newer ones and also have focused on Vista rather than XP. I'm not saying that's the case for the chipset your MacBook has but it wouldn't surprise me if there were no updated drivers for XP.

Click to expand...

Well between nVidia and Apple, it looks like they supplied bad video drivers on Leopard CD. Unfortunately so far Apple does not aknowledge the issue. I'm hoping they will resolve it some day.

As a side note, the upgraded video drivers not only make the system stable, they also gain i'd say 30-40% performance gain in 3D intensive video games. For instance, the new racing game called Pure was barely playable at medium quality settings with drivers that apple provided (they are 176.something) and pretty **** smooth on 180.70 drivers.

chscag said:

However, it looks like you somewhat solved the problem except now you can't control brightness.

Click to expand...

I could kind of control it, by going to nVidia control panel and forcing smart dimmer settings, but its just so inconvenient... It resets to maximum every reboot, and if I turn light in the room on/off I have to do it manually every times.

chscag said:

Just a curious question... Why can't you play those same videos from Leopard? You can install Flip4Mac and play WMV files just fine.
Regards.

Click to expand...

Well I bought the laptop to run Windows, MacOS was never my consideration. I love the way its built, love the quality, lightness, lcd display, nice quality sound (for a laptop), love the power adaptor. So far however I am annoyed by trackpad functionality under windows (it works beautifuly under MacOS), and of course this video issue. Wondering if Apple crippled Windows functionality on purpose?

Also I'm surprised to see that there's almost a complete lack of support from the open source community. When it comes to Windows/Linux, whenever there's no direct support from the manufacturers, the open source community seems to have all the stuff you can possibly need. I guess I'll just have to wait and hope.

Wow I spoke too soon. Just had a hard freeze with updated video drivers.

Gonna call up apple support and if they dont aknowledge the problem, this thing is going back to the store.

Hi Och,

did you manage to solve this problem?

You are not alone! ;-)