I need help!!!

[sliderking]

Frequently I get what sound like a skip in the sound whether it's while I'm playing a game, listening to music from a disc or mp3's loaded onto my hard drive. This is starting to piss me off. I put a new Maxtor 160 gb hard drive in over the weekend and also hooked up new Logitech z-680's. This problem had never happened until now. Am I getting interference from the hard drive or from something else. I tried a different sound card, I've plugged the speakers into an outlet that is away from the computer, I don't know what else to do. Can someone help?:disgust:

 

[MistaTastyCakes]

Is your new hard drive running in DMA mode? If it's PIO it'll take up a lot of CPU% and could cause that.

 

[sliderking]

I'm not sure what DMA mode is? Can you explain!


Thanks

 

[toant103]

Originally posted by: sliderking
I'm not sure what DMA mode is? Can you explain!


Thanks

DMA is direct memory access. Go to device manager and check out the IDE settings

 

[sliderking]

 

[sliderking]

I went into the device manager and found the IDE controllers, the primary IDE for device 0, 1 both were set to DMA if available. Should that be changed to PIO only or leave it set were it is. I did not that when I was using the printing or CD-Rom is active the "skipping" or interference in the sound got worse and more frequent.


Thanks

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: sliderking
I went into the device manager and found the IDE controllers, the primary IDE for device 0, 1 both were set to DMA if available. Should that be changed to PIO only or leave it set were it is. I did not that when I was using the printing or CD-Rom is active the "skipping" or interference in the sound got worse and more frequent.


Thanks

Right below the DMA If Available setting, what did it say the current DMA mode is for the devices? Make sure that the DMA If Available option is set for all your devices on the Primary and Secondary controllers.
What kind of motherboard do you have? Have you installed chipset drivers for it?


As toant103 said, DMA=Direct Memory Access. It's good, because it lets the hard drive controller talk directly to the system memory, instead of bothering the processor every time data needs to be transferred. This speeds up drive transfers, and it frees up the processor to do other things.

 

[sliderking]

Ok, In the device manager I opened up the Primary IDE Channel which gives me two selections Device 0 and Device 1. Under device 0 is says Device Type = Auto,
Device Mode = DMA if Available and Current Transfer Rate = Not Applicable.
When I open up the Seconday IDE Channel in the Device Manager it gives me the same options for Device 0 and Device 1 = will not let me change the Device Type, Device Mode = DMA if Applicable and Current Transfer Rate = Ultra DMA Mode 2.


Thanks