Serious Sound Card Issues...Please Help

[gas-man]

Hey guys.

I initially had an Audigy OEM sound card, but got fed up with the constant MP3 skipping. So I picked up, after guidance from some people on here, a GameSurround Fortissimo II.

After installing the FII I was immediately disappointed. When listening to MP3s, the sound skips, beeps, pops, and makes weird sounds like a record getting stuck or something. The occurance is about 1000% greater than with the Audigy. The Audigy would just skip ahead a tad, but the FII stutters, pops, etc.

I tried going back to my Audigy, but upon booting I get a blue screen with "DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL" and I can not get into Windows.

I have tried all the newest updates/drivers for the FII and Windows to no avail. I e-mailed the retailer of the card asking for help also, I may need to return it. No problems in games, just listening to MP3s and movies.

Any ideas guys? Greatly appreciated, thank you.

Should I format and re-install Windows?

[Robbie]

Scan for a virus, and make sure you have the latested dat files.

Does your computer seem slow and sluggish?
Rob

[gas-man]

Can you explain what you mean by DAT files? Which DAT files?

My computer does not seem sluggish at all. Just the sound skips....it's SO irritating.

[Robbie]

A "dat" file is a file that the virus scanner engine uses. It's basically the "list" of known viruses to check for. If you list is updated often and you have a newer virus your virus scanner will detect that virus.


What OS are you using? If it's XP then do a cntrl+alt+del and get to the task manager and click on performace. See if you have stuff running in the back ground that shouldn't be. If you fold or seti turn it off for a few seconds and see if your CPU usage drops down to less than 10% if it doesn't than chances are you may have a virus.

I had one once, and I couldn't figure out why my computer was running so slow. Turns out I had a virus running in the background. A quick scan and cleaning and my computer was back to normal.

You may also want to check and make sure that you have the latest drivers for your mobo, sound card and video card.

Check your device manager and see if everything is workign correctly.

I hope this helps and let us know what happend.
Rob

[gas-man]

Originally posted by Robbie

Check your device manager and see if everything is workign correctly.


This got me thinking. I have an MSI K7D Master-L board, which has on board audio. I have gone into the device manager and selected "disable" - could this be a problem? Is there a way to phyiscally remove it, or completely uninstall it, it may be causing a conflict...

[Robbie]

yeah go into your BIOS and disable it in there.
Rob

[gas-man]

I'll try that right now and get back to you.

[gas-man]

Okay, I disabled the AC97 Audio, but it still skips. No improvement at all. I'm going to install Norton 2003 now.

[gas-man]

Okay I installed Norton, scanned about 100,000 files and no virsues were found.

Any other ideas?

[Richard]

Open control panel.
Sounds and Audio Devices.
Audio tab.
Advanced button.
Performance tab.

You'll see a slider labeled "Hardware Acceleration"
By default it is maxed out. Try lowering it all the way.
If audio quality is improved try to bring it up a notch and retesting until you find the sweet spot.

[gas-man]

I've tried that also, but it still skips.

I also just tried using my AC97 on board audio, and after 5 seconds, the MP3 just stops playing.

WTF is going on???

[Richard]

Hmm, I just realized you have a dual motherboard.

I don't have any recent experience with SMP systems and modern PCI sound cards.

[Kopfab]

I'd say just go and format.. btw my Audigy 2 also has these skipping errors, but I learned to live with it
Oh yes while you're at it, do yourself a favour and install Audigy 2 drivers for your Audigy, they're supposed to be much better

[gas-man]

Can you actually install the Audigy2 drivers for the Audigy?

Here's the response I got from the retailer:

I talked to my Technician about your problem. He said it seems it's your Operating System device drivers problem. The most easily way to check is put the Sound Card into another computer or install a FRESH windows from your computer. One more thing you may check is the Virus.

So I guess I'll give it a format.....

[gas-man]

SUCCESS

Gave her the ol' format and she runs like new - no skips or pops at all and the comp is running smoooooth.

Thanks for the help guys

[Kopfab]

You using Audigy or Fortissimo now ?

[gas-man]

I went straight to the Fortissimo, I recall doing formats with the Audigy and it did not help.

[Robbie]

Well it seems as though you fixed it. I was going to recomend to you to REMOVE all sounds cards in your device manager and restart windows.

Doing that should have fixed it. Good to hear that you got it fixed.
Rob