Next thing I can think of would have to be Video. What card do you have and how much memory does it have? Is the driver for it up to date?

Hang in there Glen. I know it's frustrating, but with "a little help from your friends" you will get this going. It is very difficult to try and help when not setting in front of the machine. My hats off to Dale. He is by far the best at this. Next step, video.

Glen I get a problem with 4.06 taking a long time to load and I find it is conflicting in some way with my spy ware program. I shut down my Spyware Doctor program and it works fine which is OK as long as I remember to restart it before going on line. So I am saying try shutting any spy ware or virus protection down and see if this helps. I have contacted my spy ware company and they are trying to help me at the moment. Same as you hoster34 works fine as did 4.03.

When I do a show I have allways shut the spyware down anyway as they perform background tasks.

Thanks for the Great Support from everyone..(it is frustrating to be so close)....... I now have the .NET Framework loaded and all upgrades..... I figured out why it was so slow loading. I have 16 song lists, 8 of which are small (less than 90kb) BUT 8 are over 351kb (all are E-1 thru E-8 Chartbuster that were set up for convenience) and if that list was up when I closed Hoster it takes forever of course to load when I open Hoster.... If the small song list is open it only takes a few seconds to open ...DUH!....The only battle I have now is the video. No problem till I extend my laptop to an external monitor. I have a ATI Radeon X/1300, which is what came in this Dell Inspiron/6400 and there are no updates for the drivers from Dell. So that's where I'm at. Suggestions Please ?????

The bigest problem with laptops is they are usually set-up with shared memory for Video, meaning they get a chunk of the main memory, but that can be made smaller by system requirements if needed. So you really don't know how much is actually dedicated to video.
Instead of double clicking the display to move it to the second monitor, try dragging it and resize it to almost full screen size but not quite. This may make a difference in the sync. Some have found this worked.

I would also add to Dale's suggestion. Right click on the desktop and hit properties. Under the settings tab, change from 32 bit to 16 bit. You won't notice the difference but you video card will. The X1300 is a "HyperMemory" card. It actually only has 64mb on board and misleads you in to thinking it has more. Let us know if any of this helps. I feel you are almost there.

Morning Gentlemen, I hear what you're saying and thanks for working with me on this, please don't give up because then I have no idea what to do.......What I don't understand in my feeble brain is --- As soon as I plug in my S-Video cable and go to the Desktop, Right Click, go to settings, click on monitor 2, extend to this monitor and apply. Open Hoster, select a song, then play -- Both the small viewing area on top left and the big area that you would normally double click, the Lyrics lag. I don't even have to double click to put it on the monitor and it lags..Tried it in 16 bit color and it made no difference. I can turn off monitor 2, re-open Hoster and it's fine of course. And again, this didn't show up until 4.06....Short of buying a new laptop with a better video card, are there any other options? Thanks my friends.......

Options
 

There are always options:) This definitely sounds like a resource problem now. How much memory is installed in this computer? Adding memory would help, but let's try tweaking a little first. Do you have anything else running? I would like to refer you to a web site to look at making some changes to your configuration to maximize what you have.

http://www.blackviper.com/

I use this site every time I set up a new computer. I use the safe configuration as my guide. Then, if need be, I do some of the other tweaks until I get where I want. I won't be home for the rest of the day, so you will have to count on Dale. He's better at this than I am anyways:)

Hang in there Glen. We can still squeeze some more life out of that machine:g

If you are running wmp11 try rolling back to wmp 09.

Thanks Skybird74........I think I've tried that but I'll go back and do it again...I've been round & round so many times I forget which combination I've tried...The reason I go back and forth now is to see if it has changed between updates and other changes....I know one thing--- it's driving me crazy right now....Thanks again.....I'll let you know what I find out.

what's wmp 11 ?????????

WMP = Windows Media Player
It sounds like you did the Updates a little at a time, rather than ALL updates BEFORE installing Hoster. As a last resort, un-install Hoster & then make sure ALL updates are done. Then re-install Hoster.

Hey Skybird74, I just tried setting up the monitor & laptop, re-starting laptop but with same results......I did do the updates as described....I am scared to death to un-install & re-install for fear of losing what I've got the way my luck is running.......I did save a copy of 4.06 to a cd.....

Un-installing does NOT cause you to lose any files. Just Hoster will be un-installed. If your songs (kmas) are on an external drive, just be sure to disconnect the drive. It is not needed until you know everything is working correctly, then re-connect the drive. Un-installing Hoster also will not affect the updates you made to your computer.

Thanks to everyone for all the help and suggestions (I have tried them all).......I have un-installed & re-installed Hoster 4.06 after all the upgrades were done but I still have the same problem. FYI, I have one son that is a software engineer for Time Warner and he can't figure it out either AND he has remote access to my laptop. I have another son who works for Dell that I ordered this unit from and he is going to see what it will cost me to upgrade (if possible) on this Dell Inspiron 6400....That's all I know to do at this point unless someone else has another suggestion...ddouglass I hope you see this, I respect your opinion very much. Thanks again to everyone.....

I don't think at any point whether we asked you how much memory is in this laptop. It just maybe that there is not enough, so upgrading that would make sense.
What resolution are you running on the laptop and what resolution do you have the TV set for? If they are set real high this can have an effect on it too.

Hey Glen, I also just thought of another question for you. You said you have XP on this machine. Is it XP Home, or XP Media Center edition? MCE has some additional services installed that could make a difference.

Logical Disk Manager
Media Center Receiver Service
Media Center Scheduler
Multimedia Home Networking (MHN)
Remote Registry

Good Morning Gentlemen, I am running Windows XP Pro with a Core Duo T2250 Procesor @173Ghz and 1 GB Ram @173Ghz....I have tried everything form 32 bit to 16 bit on both displays, from 1280 X800 to 800 X 600... I feel like I have a Ferrari and live in a school zone. (got all I want but can't use it.)
We have 90 folks coming to the house Sat. Night for an Office Party and I'll be using 3.4 it looks like.....I have checked with Dell and I have the latest drivers for the video card and am getting conflicting reports on whether I can upgrade or not. That would be a bummer...Sorry for being so long winded and I hope I have answered your questions so you can help me. I am so frustrated to be this close and yet not be there. Thanks so much guys......

Glen,
Have you tried any of the items from the site that Marklwood posted? You might want to look at those (or get your son who works for Dell to help you if you are not sure about them) and see if one or more could help open up some resources.
Here is a link to the main location of those tweaks. http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

(Thanks Mark)

Dale, yep I did. We went thru the whole deal & cleaned up everything. I just had a thought..... I am on my desktop while the laptop is sitting here running and it just dawned on me to see what I have in my desktop.....duh.... I have a NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 with 128mg on this desktop. I am running Windows XP Pro Ver. 2002 SP3, AMD Athlon XP2000+ 167GHz with 1GB of ram. Should that run 4.06 without ant problems? I can always install my second copy on the decktop and see...but how do I move my KMA files so I have some music/songs to try ???? <style></style>