PCI Sound Card Stuttering, replaced and still stuttering.

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JarrodT50

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Topic # 92559 1-Nov-2011 20:06

Hi everyone, i have a Genius SM-Live Value 5.1 PCI Sound card, Not PCI-E. It keeps stuttering and i have had it replaced, and it still does it. I have turned off onboard sound in the bios. Removed drivers and i'm pretty sure i have updated them. Removed them again and installed cd drivers with the new PCI card. I really don't know why it is doing it. I can play music normally on VLC, Windows MEdia Player, Opera, Internet Explorer. And it still stutters. It happens to every song i play. ALTHOUGH it does not stutter with the Onboard audio. Any suggestions on how to fix this? I'll list my specs below. Ram is not a problem and neither is the CPU as they are hardly being used to play the music. It is really annoying to listen to and trying to play games too. I brought a new monitor as well, Could it be the drivers or the video size increase that has caused this? I can try lowering it back to what it does and see what it does.

Also Windows XP Pro SP3

Model S3060AN DK315A
Processor and Speed AMD Athlon XP2200+ 1.8 GHz/266
Chipset VIA KM266
Motherboard Salsa-GLA
RAM 256/2100 MB DDR SDRAM
Maximum 1 GB (2 x 512 MB DDR SDRAM)
Sockets Two 184-pin DDR DIMMs
Size 128, 256, and 512 MB DDR DIMMs
Free DIMM sockets None
Pair required No
Type supported JEDEC unbuffered DDR SDRAM DIMM specification
Cache 128 KB L1, 256 KB L2 Integrated on Processor module
Hard drive 40 GB
Optical drive CD-RW drive: 48x-Write / 12X-Re-write/CD-ROM speed =48x max.
Average random access 75ms
Transfer rate 7.2 MB/sec
Diskette drive 3.5-inch (1.44 MB)
Fax/Data modem V.90 56 Kbps
Fax speed Up to 14.4 Kbps
Data compression V.42 bis
Error correction V.42
EIA Fax commands Class 1
Video graphics AGP 4X graphics
Controller Integrated w/KM266 Chipset
Video memory UMA 64 MB
Network card 10/100Base-T, Integrated
MPEG-1/2 MPEG-1 for full-screen, full-motion digital video
Sound AC'97 Integrated on MB
Controller Realtek ALC201
Chassis Chameleon, 250HV PSU
USB Interface specification USB 2.0
External ports 6=USB, 1=serial, 1=parallel
Front I/O connector 2=USB
Expansion slots (Total) 3=PCI, 1=AGP
Expansion slots (Free) 2=PCI, 1=AGP
Drive bays (Total) Two 5.25-inch external, one 3.5-inch external, two 3.5-inch internal
Drive bays (Free) One 5.25-inch external, one 3.5-inch internal
Keyboard/Mouse One-touch Enhanced Keyboard, PS/2 Optical scrolling mouse

Thanks in advance guys.

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Reply # 540035 1-Nov-2011 20:13

Anti virus software is usually the culprit - have you got nortons by chance?

Try disabling your antivirus - there is a very good chance that your problem is software releated - look at the CPU usage in task manager.

tdgeek

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Reply # 540036 1-Nov-2011 20:15

I'd check Task Manager to see if there are any processes hogging the CPU. I had WMP Services hogging the CPU the other night, even though I don't usually use that

In Device Manager check what IRQ it is using and what else is using it. Swap slots if you can.

Check the AV or defrag is not running. Although you would not think it is running every time you have the issue. Start PC, leave it to settle, so no HDD activity, play a track off a USB drive and watch HDD light

JarrodT50

37 posts

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Reply # 540037 1-Nov-2011 20:16

I actually don't use an anti virus. Yes, naughty. But my pc struggles to have it in the background. That isn't an issue here as well. I use the windows firewall and i have a firewall on my router. I recently cleaned out my pc as well. So i'm virus free as well. Any other suggestions. It still stutters after changing to my original screen resolution.

JarrodT50

37 posts

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Reply # 540038 1-Nov-2011 20:18

Hi, tdgeek. What is the IRQ? Just so i know what i am doing. Also there is no ram usage and cpu usage when it is running. The HDD light hardy ever goes off except for the odd flicker or when i load a program.

JarrodT50

37 posts

Geek

Reply # 540043 1-Nov-2011 20:26

Nitrotech, i watched the cpu in task manager. It doesn't go past over 20% Usage. Even off a usb drive as tdgeek suggested. Using VLC media player.

tdgeek

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Reply # 540044 1-Nov-2011 20:36

JarrodT50: Hi, tdgeek. What is the IRQ? Just so i know what i am doing. Also there is no ram usage and cpu usage when it is running. The HDD light hardy ever goes off except for the odd flicker or when i load a program.

Do you man it hardly ever goes on??

IRQ is an interrupt, simplistically, its what a device uses to have contact with the data bus and CPU. Some devices can share IRQ's as you will see in Device Manager, some need one to themselves. It may be two devices that are ok sharing but not with each other. PCI slots have IRQ's hard allocated to them by slot as per the manual of the motherboard. Go to Device Manager, rigth click Computer in Windows Explorer. view by Type or Connection, scroll down to PCI devices.

tdgeek

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Reply # 540048 1-Nov-2011 20:49

You have a 40Gb hard drive and 256Mb RAM?

dontpanic42

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Reply # 540051 1-Nov-2011 20:53

It could also be that the sound card is set to 48000Hz and the media/music you are trying to play is encoded at 44100Hz. This would usually not be a problem, as most sound cards will re-sample on the fly, but there may be something wrong that is causing the sound card to go amiss.

Are they any settings you can change for the sound card that will change the sampling rate?

freitasm

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Reply # 540053 1-Nov-2011 20:58

JarrodT50: I actually don't use an anti virus. Yes, naughty. But my pc struggles to have it in the background. That isn't an issue here as well. I use the windows firewall and i have a firewall on my router. I recently cleaned out my pc as well. So i'm virus free as well. Any other suggestions. It still stutters after changing to my original screen resolution.

Actually, a firewall is not protecting you against virus or spyware. It's not designed for that, period.

If you have only 256MB RAM, then you should think of going to at least 1GB. And then install an antivirus, and run a full scan.

Visit www.microsoft.com/security and download the free Microsoft Security Essentials.

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JarrodT50

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Reply # 540067 1-Nov-2011 21:19

tdgeek. I'm not sure how those instructions work. Could you make it clearer?
And yes, i have a 40gb HDD and 256mb ram. A rather old pc. 8 years actually. When playing music it just flickers on and off like every second or so.

dontpanic42, i don't think i have any setting to change the sampling rate. I can't find any in the control panel or the sound configuration either. Really annoying that it does this.

Also could this be a virus problem? Is it possible for a virus to cause this? I'm very short on money as well so i don't really want to upgrade ram just quite yet. I have intentions of it if i keep this or just buy an entire new system in time ahead. But i need to get this issue sorted out so i can play games and music, movies etc.
Any other suggestions? Other than possible viruses? I could try a clean install of xp, as i have a spare copy laying around here. But i would do that as a last resort, and it may not even solve my problem...
Thanks again guys

gzt

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Reply # 540076 1-Nov-2011 21:33

Has it previously worked correctly with this card?

I can play music normally on VLC, Windows MEdia Player, Opera, Internet Explorer. And it still stutters. It happens to every song i play.

I'm not sure I understand this. Are you saying it only happens when playing CD audio? Any case, please clarify.

JarrodT50

37 posts

Geek

Reply # 540085 1-Nov-2011 21:41

I actually don't have a cd drive or dvd drive etc. As it died on me. But watching youtube, music files on my pc, .mp4 videos. Every audio file i have on my pc it stutters with.
Also when i had first got this card, (Thursday last week) It worked fine the first day, a bit of stuttering. But i thought it was ram issues. But it continued to do it, even on monitor speakers, a cruddy 2.1 i had and now with my logitech Z5300 i just got. I did a system restore to the day before i got everything. I installed drivers and it still stuttered. So it could be a virus, software or another driver issue on the pc??

tdgeek

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Reply # 540086 1-Nov-2011 21:43

Ok, Win XP

From memory
Control Panel-System-Device Manager
You can change the view to list by Type.

But, my daughter had a PC like that, it took an age to do anything as the RAM is already used up. You implied it wasnt but you probably looked at the various memory tables in Task Manager that include the swapfile allocation.

To help optimise this ol' setup you need to focus on stopping anything superfluous. Unistall anything not needed in Control Panel-Add/Remove programs, restart PC.
Start-Run msconfig, untick unneeded programs starting in Startup, resttart PC
Go back to Device Manager and fix the swapfile to one size, http://windowstipoftheday.blogspot.com/2006/12/windows-xp-swap-file-virtual-memory_18.html

Ideally, using those instructions, remove the swapfile (virtual memory), restart PC, defrag, add back swapfile as instructed, restart PC

To me there is no issue probably. Its lack of speed. Its of no consequence that CPU speed is not being fully used, the key is the slowest part of the system, and that is your memory which is running at hard disk speed, as that is where after bootup, your memory is being used from. The hard disk you have is also slow.

Id recommend to format and clean install. Get the devices running and play a track. If you can get hold of another old hard drive, add that, and if its bigger, put Windows on the 40Gb the swapfile on the bigger drive and fixed to one size, before anything else is added to the second drive, that way the swapfile will be permanently continguous, i.e. not fragmented.

A bit of effort, but you will get the old PC running as well as it can I feel.

JarrodT50

37 posts

Geek

Reply # 540087 1-Nov-2011 21:43

Also i read up that swapping PCI slots could fix the issue but it didn;t do anything. I haven't moved it back to the original PCI slot either. I will do this and tell what happens with it. Will post again soon...

tdgeek

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Reply # 540092 1-Nov-2011 21:54

I will have a coffee before folding washing! (Wife is in China)!

My BEST advice is:

The PC is old but it can work fine. If you can get the memory to 512Mb it will be good. Ive done this before on relly's PC's and it will fly. Ut will feel like that. Your lack of RAM is holding it back big time. A bigger or second hard drive as above will help a lot too. Faster, better swapfile access time, if that 40Gb is full-ish that just adds to the issue. You dont need to speed up the PC, you need to remove what is crippling it. Im sure a stick of RAM will cost little or nothing from a friend or Trademe. Post a WTB on here.

Cheers

T

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