MPC-HC audio cutout in fullscreen

Hello,
I've been having problems with MPC and was hoping someone would be able to help.

The system I am using is Windows Vista Business SP2 Panasonic Toughbook CF-T7
Intel U7500 Core 2 Duo 1.06GHz
2GB RAM

To clarify, MPC worked perfectly on multiple MP3 files.
I then wanted to play an MP4 file. It plays fine when I'm not in fullscreen mode
but when I put it into fullscreen the audio cuts out for a few seconds every 10 seconds.

I read that using EVR custom would fix the problem but it has always been using EVR custom.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Since you have a relatively weak processor, it seems to be a performance problem.

First thing you should try is enabling hardware acceleration. In LAV Video decoder settings, select DXVA2 native, and enable it for H.264.

If that is not sufficient then use the standard EVR instead of the custom one. That is a little bit more efficient (and offers a bit less functionality).

Why do you say it's weak? Is it the clock?
If it was performance, why would MP3 files run perfectly and why would MP4 function when not in full screen?
Hardware acceleration is being fully used.

What menus do I go through to change the LAV video decoder settings?

I've tried using every video renderer except madvr and haali.

It is a low-powered laptop processor. It has just two cores and low clockspeed. Modern desktop processors are ten times as fast. Nevertheless, it should be able to handle most stuff. The primary reason for suspecting a performance problem is because that is simply the most common cause for stuttering audio and video. Speaking of that, was video playback smooth?

There are various ways to access the decoder settings. For example during playback:
MPC-HC menu > Play > Filters
When hardware acceleration is active the status bar in MPC-HC shows "Playing (H/W)" instead of "Playing".

You can monitor CPU usage with the Windows Task Manager. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to open that program.

The video rendering does not have any direct effect on the audio. So the recommendation you found for using EVR Custom was probably because that renderer is compatible with hardware acceleration.

The playback performance of a file is not a direct consequence of its file extension. There can be huge difference even between files of the same type. Performance for example depends highly on the type of video, the bitrate and video resolution. You mentioned MP3 files, but that is a common file extension for audio files. So it is a bit confusing since you are comparing it with video playback.

I understand how it is comparatively weak to modern processors but I've played videos fine on a Pentium 2.

Yes, it was smooth when playing the MP4 file with audio problems and the one without problems.
Pardon me, I meant to list MP4 in the original post.
I am able to play the same file type fine. I didn't mean to compare audio files with video files.

I'll list the CPU usage, file specifications and the results of decoder alteration in my next post.