[baltclown]

About two months ago my computer started acting weird when I tried to play music. Especially in ITunes. Songs will start to skip and get glitchy and eventually stop and if that happens then I can't play any sound at all on the computer without restarting it. I can pause and restart the song which temporarily fixes the glitches but they will come back a 10 seconds later.

Songs play better in Windows Media player but after I play a few there's some sort of high pitched audio distortion that comes in. Pausing and restarting the songs seems to help there too.

Movies have been playing somewhat choppy too.

I have the computer for a couple years and havent had this problem until recently. Is it a problem with the audio driver?

The only other thing I can think of is that one of my memory sticks recently went bad but it still leaves me with 512 MB which should be enough, right?

[Advertisements]

512MB of ram should be plenty. However, it does sound to me like a resource issue. Perhaps you ahve been infected with some malware wich takes up a lot of processing power. Go to www.downloads.com and download hijackthis. There is no installation needed, but I highly reccommend unzipping it from its compressed folder. Open it, and when the window pops up, click the option that says "none of the above, just start the program." Then press "scan." Once the scan is complete, click on the "save log" button. Copy all the text in the log, and paste it into a new thread under the malware forum,and ask someone to analyze it. That seems like the only thing that would cause something like this, so try that, and if it doesn't work, add a reply to this topic. Good luck.

[ejay563]

512MB of ram should be plenty. However, it does sound to me like a resource issue. Perhaps you ahve been infected with some malware wich takes up a lot of processing power. Go to www.downloads.com and download hijackthis. There is no installation needed, but I highly reccommend unzipping it from its compressed folder. Open it, and when the window pops up, click the option that says "none of the above, just start the program." Then press "scan." Once the scan is complete, click on the "save log" button. Copy all the text in the log, and paste it into a new thread under the malware forum,and ask someone to analyze it. That seems like the only thing that would cause something like this, so try that, and if it doesn't work, add a reply to this topic. Good luck.

[baltclown]

Yeah I did that already because I posted recently cause Windows seemed to be running slow. But no one found any problems with malware and I started to think that it might just have been a sound problem since thats when I was noticing the "slowness" and assumed my computer couldnt keep up. May still be a resource issue though. I just dont know what to try next.

[baltclown]

any other thoughts? thanks!

[ejay563]

yeah, post the hijackthis log here, so I can see what processes are running, and see if you have any resource hogs on your machine. Right now, that the only thing I can think of.

[baltclown]

HJT Log removed

[warriorscot]

You do not post HJT logs in hardware or anywhere else except malware unless directed to by a member of staff. If the malware people who have had all the proper training couldnt find anything wrong you probably cant. Ejay563 you are in geekU and you know this.

Now to what we do in hardware.

Could you please post a full list of system specs, you can use sysspec or PCwizard to get this information. You could also use tuneup but its not as accurate.

How old is the system, when was the last time you defragged the hard drive and checked it for errors.

I see you have tuneup ,i would reccomend running its full set of scans and defragmentors.

Edited by warriorscot, 12 April 2006 - 06:45 AM.

[ejay563]

sorry, i asked him to. I was just gonna look for resource hogs, and I didn't know about that rule.

Edited by ejay563, 12 April 2006 - 08:55 AM.

[warriorscot]

Easier ways to do it, you could have looked on his log he posted in malware. Well if you didnt know thats ok now you do.

Doesnt sound to much like a resource hogging app, easiest way to check that is always start up process manager and close everything except the important processes for the system and what you need eg your video and see if it still happens.
However it sounds more hard drive related, possibly a temperature problem or something else thats why the most important log we need in hardware is a system spec log.

[baltclown]

I apologize if I violated the rules by posting the log. I do appreciate the help though.

I have three harddrives and I ran defrag and checked for errors on the drive with the operating system and the drive with all my media files on it about a month ago when I started having the problem. Ive also tried shutting down the unnecessary processes and still had the same problem.

Here's the info from sysspec

Windows: Windows XP5.1 (Build 2600) Service Pack 2
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2900.2180
Memory (RAM): 512 MB
CPU Info: AMD Athlon™ XP 1800+
CPU Speed: 1525.3 MHz
Sound card: NVIDIA® nForce™ Audio
Display Adapters: RADEON 7500 SERIES | RADEON 7500 SERIES | NetMeeting driver | RDPDD Chained DD |
Screen Resolution: 1024 X 768
Network: Network Present
Network Adapters: NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Adapter - Packet Scheduler Miniport |
CD / DVD Drives: E: SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-252B | F: SAMSUNG DVD-ROM SD-608 | I: LI3234P FGL842N |
Default Printer: HP PSC 1500 series
COM Ports: COM1 | COM2 |
LPT Ports: LPT1 |
Mouse: 5 Button Wheel Mouse Present
Hard Disks: C: 14.6GB | D: 97.1GB | G: 74.5GB |
Hard Disks - Free: C: 6.4GB | D: 34.6GB | G: 9.3GB |
USB Controllers: Detected: 3 host controllers.
Firewire (1394): Detected: 1 host controllers.
PCMCIA (Laptops): Not Installed
Manufacturer: Phoenix Technologies, LTD
Product Make: A7N8X
Serial Number: xxxxxxxxxxx
AC Power Status: OnLine
BIOS Info: AT/AT COMPATIBLE | 11/27/02 | Nvidia - 42302e31 | |
Time Zone: Eastern Standard Time
Battery: No Battery
Motherboard: ASUSTeK Computer INC. A7N8X
Modems: Not detected

[warriorscot]

Well there goes my temperature line out the window, i thought it might be a temp problem in intel CPUs the speedstep kicks down the speed on the cpus but amd dont have that so CPU is out.

So im back to my original thinking thta its the hard drive. Try turnng up virtual memory and freeing up hard drive space, since you only have 512Mb of ram virtual memory should be a decent size preferably.

Is your problem only with media or do you experience sluggish and odd performance in other applications. A driver problem is stil possible but its not the usual symptoms so thats why im not thinking it the main prob but to eliminate it we can get you updated drivers and a fresh install of codecs and media apps to rule that out(being thourogh more than anything else really): so for codecs get the Klite mega codec pack its a nice thing to have installed in your system at any rate it has codecs to play ANYTHING and media player classic which is the most stable player.

You get Nvidia drivers from this page http://www.nvidia.co...ers/drivers.asp and you need these from what i can gather http://www.nvidia.co...62_win2kxp.html . Ideally i like to get these from the manufacturer however the bright sparks over at Asus have redone there site and none of the external links are to the right pages. So nvidia has to do same drivers though.

[baltclown]

I do experience some sluggishness in general but it definitely hinders the media performance the most noticeably.

Out of curiosity since I recently lost a memory stick, is it possible that there is some setting that was set with the expectation that the computer would have more memory at its disposal than it does now that would be causing the problem?

I forgot to answer your other questions in the previous post which was that the computer is about 1 1/2 years old and was assembled by a friend of mine.

The virtual memory paging file for the C drive is 1152 MB to a max of 2304 MB. The other two drives dont have a paging file. Dont know if thats normal or not.

[baltclown]

Sorry to bug, but were there any further thoughts on this issue?

[baltclown]

I was trying to burn some CDs and Im getting a lot of buffer underrun errors which I wasnt getting before. So I do think it sounds more an more like a resource issue and less like just a sound driver issue.

[warriorscot]

You can eliminate any errors that could be bios related by resetting the bios, just unhook the power cable and remove the battery for a couple of minutes put it back and go into bios and load the optimised defaults if you have them and set your boot priorities again, i dont think it will really solve to much but its a good place to start to eliminate an errant setting causing it.

Your C drive seems Quite small which makes me thing its an older drive than the others, what i would do is get your newest or fastest drive back up everything you want to keep and do a fresh windows install on that drive you should always have your windows installation on your fastest hard drive as the speed of the drive directly affects system performance, its seems to me the easiest way to eliminate a problem with the installation/drivers etc and the hard drive which i have a sneaking suspicion is on its last leg. You can check the drives condition using manufacturers diagnostic software but given the size im guessing youve had the drive a few years and they do have a lifetime so it would be approaching it if its older.

Theres a lot of half measures and tests but given you have multiple drives i would install windows on one of those and wipe the other drive clean, reinstallation doesnt take to long and of you go on the internet and download the drivers you need before hand go on

Your mainboard drivers i think are here http://support.asus....SLanguage=en-us but there are a few different boards i cant find one with the nforce audio though they are all realtek audio or dont have audio drivers youll need to loo in your own manual or on the board to get your specific board some have better support than others. ATI will have a driver for your 7500 if you dont have one, once youve got your drivers together burn them to a disk and keep them they are something you should have lying around. That will eliminate the problems hopefull if it doesnt you can always go back to your old installation. As long as you back up the stuff you keep this should be a safe and quick operation and relativley simple, alot of people do it regularly as a clean windows install has its advantages.