Sound Driver problems.

[Chairman Mao]

Missus lent her Acer notebook to a local client for 2 days.

Of course the monkey broke it. The screen I was told.

Monkey then got it 'fixed' in Fortune.

Comes back chock-full of shit. Lots of Programs deleted etc.

I (re)download all the usuals (CCleaner, an antivirus etc etc). The antivirus had been deleted by one of the monkeys.

Anyway...

The sound is scratchy and jumpy when playing music. Still the same after cleaning everything up. Doesn't matter what media player is used. OS is Win XP.

So guess it's the sound driver?

It has 'Realtek' on it now. I don't know if it had a different one before.

I want to uninstall it and download another one. Not that easy to find one that can be fully downloaded.

Anyone know how/where to get a good one. Or one that just works. No need for bells and whistles.

[Butterfly]

classic,

not a driver problem per se, probably a damage HDD (did he drop the laptop ?) that "interrupt" the sound constantly

I had that once, after the HDD was dropped,

the same WINXP with no update or re-installation worked perfectly and no problem with the sound after the damaged HDD was replaced

hint: don't lend laptops to monkeys

[sabaii sabaii]

Maybe he bust your internal speaker, or the monkeys at fortune swapped yours.

Try using some external speakers, see if you still have the problem.

Has he wiped everything off it ? had to be re-formatted ?

[Chairman Mao]

Same sound issues with external speakers.

Computer wasn't reformatted or wiped. Just lots of shit added onto it and lots of other programs (cleaners etc.) deleted.

[Chairman Mao]

So any good downloadable sound drivers out there?

[dirtydog]

vlc player and k lite codecs, also check what crap is running in the background, if your running at nearly 100percent you will get jumpy.

[Camel Toe]

Changing brands won't necessarily save you. realtec is what XP comes with. Uninstall yours and go to MS updates and get another. If the new one doesn't work it's no longer a software issue.

[Guru50]

Realtek
It seems a known problem with Acer/realtek
Can't you replace a backup?

[Thetyim]

Of course the monkey broke it. The screen I was told.

Computer wasn't reformatted or wiped. Just lots of shit added onto it and lots of other programs (cleaners etc.) deleted.

I smell a rat.
If the screen was broken then why the need to touch any software

[Chairman Mao]

They're Thai and know best.

[Guru50]

Seems you didn't found a solution yet?
You don't mention wich operating system it has.
For Vista, Download drivers and upgrade your Windows 7, Windows Vista, or Windows XP with the latest updates
or maybe here, ACER Sound Driver Download
good luck

[Chairman Mao]

Cheers, will take a look at them.

It's Win XP.

[sabaii sabaii]

I have an Acer, my driver is Realtek High Definition Audio

I have Windows 7

Here is the driver for Win XP

Realtek High Definition Audio Codec (Windows 2000/XP/2003) - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Download.com

[alwarner]

CM - It's the Laos government getting back at you for swerving those 40b back handers.

[Chairman Mao]

^^ Cheers.

I uninstalled the old one and put that one on it but it's still the same.

Must be something else going on.

Is the same in WMP, GOM, and VLF players.

[sabaii sabaii]

Have you opened Task Manager and looked at what processes are running in the background, as DD mentioned ?


^^ haha, not bitter at all eh ?

[Chairman Mao]

Have you opened Task Manager and looked at what processes are running in the background, as DD mentioned ?

Doesn't look like much to me, but I ain't a techie.

[sabaii sabaii]

Looks fine,

Apart from the Jungle Bunny Music

[Butterfly]

telling you, it's the HDD damaged, nothing to do with the driver

how do you think the monkey broke the screen ? he dropped it, screen smashed, HD smashed

do a CHKDSK for surface error, I bet it will be full of them

[sabaii sabaii]

This guy had your problem

http://www.techsupportforum.com/foru...nd-229963.html

Updating his codecs sorted it

Free-Codecs.com : Download K-Lite Codec Pack 7.9.0 FULL, K-Lite Codec Pack 7.9.0 STANDARD, K-Lite Codec Pack 7.9.0 BASIC : K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and related tools

[sabaii sabaii]

Try placing a song on your D Drive and see if plays ok from there

If so this could be the solution

Try this, the guy is on XP too

My girlfriend's PC is an amalgamation of old and new parts. The ten-year-old motherboard went south and needed replaced, but the IDE hard drives were still in good shape. Seeking to merge the old with the new, it was upgraded from a 750MHz AMD Duron processor on a decade-old Gigabyte motherboard (hot when AGP first debuted) to one of the newer Intel Core 2 Duos with a Gigabyte S-Series motherboard. IDE is on the way out, replaced by Serial ATA, so I had to look specifically for that in whatever motherboard I was going to buy.
We put the thing together, fired it up, installed Windows XP Pro, got everything else on there, and she started happily plugging away on the upgraded monster (slipped a Geforce 7950GT in there to replace the 3dfx Voodoo3 too, to feed her growing gaming habit). Everything seemed ready to cook.
As an avid online-TV watcher, it wasn't long before she discovered the sound and video in the stuff she was watching would stutter often, though it seemed to smooth out as things played on. I initially chocked it up to buffering issues, but when it started happening in offline videos and music in Windows Media Player and iTunes, I knew something was amiss.
We tried updating sound hardware drivers, but that didn't help. Then we defragmented the hard drive, but to no avail. I even replaced the IDE cable, but nothing changed. I had narrowed it down to only happening when the C drive was being accessed, though. She tested it by playing a video file, then in the middle of it, she initiated a file copy from her laptop through the LAN to the afflicted machine's C drive and sure enough, as soon as the HDD activity LED lit up, the sound started getting choppy. Even Windows start up and shut down sound events were affected.
After a few minutes of tireless searching (hey, I'm good), we stumbled onto a couple very specific fixes other users fighting this problem had reported.
The first was to see if Windows had reverted the Transfer Mode between the hard drive and motherboard from the more common and faster DMA back to the slower but more reliable PIO. Windows switches automatically to PIO after a number of disk errors are reported, as it's apparently a more stable reading method. Problem is, since it is slower, it can cause glitches like what we were experiencing, and it's particular to IDE drives, so I wouldn't have seen this before on our other machines, which use SATA exclusively.
To check for this, go to Settings-> Control Panel-> System-> Device Manager-> IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers-> Primary IDE Channel-> Advanced Settings. Look under Device 0 and it should be set to "DMA if available." If it says "PIO only" instead, change it, click OK, save settings, and reboot. This may resolve your issue, though if the disk is really going bad, Windows is likely to change it back to PIO after some time, and you may want to look into getting a new hard drive.

Here's some of Butterfly's favourite ways to fix,

However, in our case, both HDDs were already set to DMA, so that was a dead end. Then the other solution arose, which is a little more involved. It involves editing the registry, and if you're not completely sure what you're doing here, you may want to ask someone more knowledgeable to help you.
Click Start, go to Run, type in REGEDIT, click OK. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\
{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} (make sure you match the key exactly, as there may be many similar surrounding it).
Expand this key/folder and you'll notice a number of subkeys, numbered 0000, 0001, 0002, and so on. There may only be a couple, though there could be several. Click on each one and look for the item "DriverDesc" in the right pane, and to the right of that, find the ones that say "Primary IDE Channel" and "Secondary IDE Channel." If it says anything other than that, you are in the wrong subkey.
Once you identify the Primary IDE Channel key, scroll down in the right pane till you find MasterIdDataCheckSum and/or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. If you know for sure whether the drive you need to fix is set to Master or Slave, delete the appropriate key (MasterIdDataCheckSum for Master, SlaveIdDataCheckSum for Slave). If you don't have any idea, it can't really hurt to delete both. Windows will simply re-identify this information on the next reboot.
We deleted both the MasterIdDataCheckSum and SlaveIdDataCheckSum for the Secondary Channel and the MasterId for the Primary Channel; I suspect the Slave drive had both in this case because, on the old motherboard, each drive had its own IDE port, but the new mobo only had one, so both had to share a cable/port.
After deleting the keys and closing the registry, she rebooted the computer, and has been enjoying her shows online ever since, with nary a skip in about two hours of nonstop playback. She even retested the file transfer during a show to see if it did anything, and playback was still fine.
Seems like I nipped another bug. Maybe now I can get back to work *smirk*.

Read more: Fixing Choppy Audio/Video Playback - Page 2 - Blogcritics Sci/Tech

Read more: Fixing Choppy Audio/Video Playback - Blogcritics Sci/Tech

[Chairman Mao]

Copied some music to D drive. No difference.

chkdsk. No problems found.

Downloaded those K-Lite Codecs. No difference.


C drive is only half full with 14gbs on it. D drive (100+gbs) is almost empty. Ram 1GB and 1.60ghz. Could something have been changed with the virtual memory or something?

[Guru50]

Found this, Acer Sound Problem - How to Solve it

[Chairman Mao]

Thanks.

Seems to be the 'Primary IDE Channel' is in PIO Mode. Transfer mode is listed as 'DMA if available'. Current transfer mode: PIO Mode.

This is in control panel, system, device manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers.


That's all gobbledygook to me, but others on the net (and one of the links above) highlight it as an issue. Computer is Acer Aspire One.

A few have linked to this.

[Guru50]

And did you find the virtual basic script?

1) copy and paste the code to notepad..
2) save it as "resetdma.vbs"..
3) double click your saved resetdma.vbs..
that must be it.

' Visual Basic Script program to reset the DMA status of all ATA drives

' Copyright © 2006 Hans-Georg Michna

' Version 2007-04-04

' Works in Windows XP, probably also in Windows 2000 and NT.
' Does no harm if Windows version is incompatible.

If MsgBox("This program will now reset the DMA status of all ATA drives with Windows drivers." _
& vbNewline & "Windows will redetect the status after the next reboot, therefore this procedure" _
& vbNewline & "should be harmless.", _
vbOkCancel, "Program start message" ) _
= vbOk Then

RegPath = "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\"
ValueName1Master = "MasterIdDataChecksum"
ValueName1Slave = "SlaveIdDataChecksum"
ValueName2Master = "UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed"
ValueName2Slave = "UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed"
ValueName3 = "ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess"
MessageText = "The following ATA channels have been reset:"
MessageTextLen0 = Len(MessageText)
ConsecutiveMisses = 0
Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell" )

For i = 0 to 999
RegSubPath = Right("000" & i, 4) & "\"

' Master

Err.Clear
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.RegRead RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Master
errMaster = Err.Number
On Error Goto 0
If errMaster = 0 Then
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Master
WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName2Master
On Error Goto 0
MessageText = MessageText & vbNewLine & "Master"
End If

' Slave

Err.Clear
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.RegRead RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Slave
errSlave = Err.Number
On Error Goto 0
If errSlave = 0 Then
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName1Slave
WshShell.RegDelete RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName2Slave
On Error Goto 0
If errMaster = 0 Then
MessageText = MessageText & " and "
Else
MessageText = MessageText & vbNewLine
End If
MessageText = MessageText & "Slave"
End If

If errMaster = 0 Or errSlave = 0 Then
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.RegWrite RegPath & RegSubPath & ValueName3, 1, "REG_DWORD"
On Error Goto 0
ChannelName = "unnamed channel " & Left(RegSubPath, 4)
On Error Resume Next
ChannelName = WshShell.RegRead(RegPath & RegSubPath & "DriverDesc" )
On Error Goto 0
MessageText = MessageText & " of " & ChannelName & ";"
ConsecutiveMisses = 0
Else
ConsecutiveMisses = ConsecutiveMisses + 1
If ConsecutiveMisses >= 32 Then Exit For ' Don't search unnecessarily long.
End If
Next ' i

If Len(MessageText) <= MessageTextLen0 Then
MessageText = "No resettable ATA channels with Windows drivers found. Nothing changed."
Else
MessageText = MessageText & vbNewline _
& "Please reboot now to reset and redetect the DMA status."
End If

MsgBox MessageText, vbOkOnly, "Program finished normally"

End If ' MsgBox(...) = vbOk

' End of Visual Basic Script program