sound card issues on a pc

August 10, 2004 2:12 PM

['PooterFilter] So I've put Win 2k Server on my laptop, and now the sound card clicks/skips. I'm not getting anywhere with this problem. Any ideas? [mi]

It's a Toshiba Satellite Pro 4300 with a Yamaha DS-XG. I've tried the driver from Toshiba but that skips and clicks. I've tried a few different Yamaha DS-XG drivers but they fail completely. Previously had WinME installed and all worked fine.

Oh and this happens with WMP, WinAmp, RealPlayer with CD's, WAV's and MP3's.

posted by dodgygeezer to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

You should see what IRQ your sound card is using. Being a laptop, it might be slightly harder to do, but go to your BIOS and force your sound hardware (or the piece of hardware that is sharing your soundcard) to a different IRQ and see what happens. Does it click when you are accessing the hard drive? Does it click more when your on the net?
posted by Keyser Soze at 3:25 PM on August 10, 2004

Also, go to your System control panel and see what "role" your computer is set to -- file server vs. workstation, I think. As you could imagine, processor power is shunted towards file server-like activities (hard disk caching, server processes) when your computer is set to be the former, and towards user-like activities (video redrawing, audio) when it's set to the latter.
posted by delfuego at 4:20 PM on August 10, 2004

Can I ask what may seem like a dumb question... why are you running Windows 2000 Server? You might find that your hardware (and drivers) respond a lot better to 2000 Professional.
posted by cheaily at 9:55 PM on August 10, 2004

There are very few differences between the server and workstation flavors of NT. One of them is the scheduler, which in a slower, more marginal machine might make the difference between smooth and choppy audio from foreground applications.
posted by majick at 10:13 PM on August 10, 2004

Response by poster: I guess I should just post here for the sake of closure.

Thanks for the ideas but they haven't helped and the problem continues.

I was going to use 2k Server for some development work / testing I was doing. That requirement has now passed so I'll probably reformat and try XP.

I do tech support for a living (admitedly just servers) and I can't believe how bloody frustrating this problem has been - there aren't many problems that defeat me but this one has. Persistence is futile, I guess it just aint gonna work with this OS.

Once again - thanks for the help.
posted by dodgygeezer at 3:08 AM on August 13, 2004