"Skipping" audio problem - Crystal CS4205

[George Park]

At my wit's end.

I have a (2) Dell c400 with Crystal CS4205 audio, both are running WinXP.

One has no issue with audio, the other plays back EVERY sound with a
skip/echo - I can't get the audio clear.

Moving the harddisk between the two shells has the same effect - same XP
different hardware, same results (ugh).

Can anyone give me a hand with why this is happening?

Thanks,
gp

 

[paulmd]

Tell me more about these two machines, what model(s) hard drive is in
them? and the 2 copies of XP. Were they each loaded by hand, or is one
a clone?

Are these machines Identical, do they have the same bios revision? How
about bios settings?

I'm not clear on whether the problem stays with the hard drives, or
with the shells.

 

[George Park]

The hard disks are the same in both, hitachi DK320A020F 20Gb.

Copies of XP are Pro, SP2, hand loaded but by a checklist.

They are nearly identical, the one that is having the problems has more
software loaded on it but not too much and nothing out of the ordinary for a
standard office PC. They both have the same BIOS, driver revs, hardware,
etc.

When the hard disk from the problem machine is put in another shell it has
the same problem, When the disks from (2) other C400 are put in the shell
the problem drive came from they both work fine - the problem is with
something in the OS and I just can't figure it out and it's driving me
crazy.

Regards,
gp

 

[paulmd]

The hard disks are the same in both, hitachi DK320A020F 20Gb.

I can't find that model via google, perhaps this is a typo?

I suspect that you either have a bad, or marginal hard disk, corrupted
files, or a virus. Or even, perhaps an antivirus program, or firewall,
or anti-spyware program, or some OTHER program that is always on
(these put a quickstarter on your system), and saps system resources.
Your machines do meet the technical requirements for XP, but they're
still on the low side.

File fragmentation could be also to blame, but my gut tells me not.


THis is hitachi's program for testing their hard drives. If you get
SMART problems, that drive is going south, and the symptom is poor
performance. This is my best guess.

http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm#DFT

 

[George Park]

The laptop runs fine otherwise, Segate SeaTools find no issues with the
drive.

I've taken every piece of software off of the system that could impact
performance, closed down services, processes, etc. and still nothing helps.
The disk has been defragged, has no viruses and has only minimal apps in
start up (earthlink spam blocker, touchpad) and nothing in run.

Most bizarre, totally irritating.

gp

 

[paulmd]

The laptop runs fine otherwise, Segate SeaTools find no issues with the
drive.

Seatools does work with NonSeagate drives, BUT... try hitachi's tool.
Use the drive fitness tester, let it run for a couple loops at least.
I've had at least one drive that passed the sequential read tests,
start to fail when doing random seeks.

I've taken every piece of software off of the system that could impact
performance, closed down services, processes, etc. and still nothing helps.
The disk has been defragged, has no viruses and has only minimal apps in
start up (earthlink spam blocker, touchpad) and nothing in run.

It's probably not the touchpad, try getting rid of the spamblocker.

Your other option is scorched-earth. Do a CLEAN reinstall on the
problem drive. Or try a clean load on another hard drive.

Sometimes stuff happens, a marginal Install CD, didn't copy correctly
the files while loading. And you just have to nuke it and wonder what
the problem was...

 

[Darrell S]

I had a similar problem. It was solved by doing a search for updated Sound
Blaster drivers and installing.