what is happening to my dvd drive, when I play a dvd the picture starts out ok but after a while the pictures starts to play in slow motion, it jerks and the sound crackles, I have looked at lots of help websites and apparently lots of pc users are having this problem recently.My dvd drive used to work perfectly and only recently has this problem started.Its not a disk problem because all discs do this. I have tried changing from PIO mode to DMA if available but with no noticable effect.
Why cant I get a straight answer about what is causing this.
Microsoft says its a glitch that will be cleared up by using their latest patch but this does not explain anything.I didnt pay a fortune for my pc to be ripped off like this - Im thinking about replaceing the hardware , but this might not cure anything if this is a built in software fault.... any insight into this phenomena would be useful ,any body got a cure( I am naturally distrusting towards microsoft patches so I wont be trying that)

Have you tried a different software playback package and don't rule out that the drive itself could of course be failing. Is it only DVD's that cause problems? How about audio CD's and VCD/SVCD discs, if all types of disc have playback problems then I would look to the drive itself.
As for MS patches, they are released for a very good reason, say what you will about MS software that is so buggy or weak security wise but if they fix the problems you should patch your system.

The drive should be using DMA mode anyway - if it's flipping into PIO mode then there are read errors occurring.After 6 read errors XP defaults to PIO and it's a pain to change it back (uninstall the ide controller for the drive channel and reboot).
I would seriously consider changing the drive .

zhoukoudiansgaa, what software are you using to play your DVDs? If it's PowerDVD 5, then there are known software issues, particularly with Pentium 4 based systems. There's a patch on their website which fixes the problem.