My Audigy2 is squealing like a pig and i can't stop it!

[Looney1a]

About a week ago i installed my audigy2, and as the title says, its a squealing little piggy!

Let me translate from Looney langauge into english.

Most of you would have heard of the "squeal of death" or the "scream of death" which plagues the audigy cards' reputation. Well that's basicly my problem. For all of you who have not heard of it, it is where during a game with eax enabled (and some reports while playing mp3s) the computer will lock up without warning and the speaker will make a sickining squealing sound and the only way to get rid of it is to restart the system. With my system i can't play ut2003 with eax for any more than 30 secs before this occurs, so it is VERY annoying. I think it takes about 10 - 15 mins in SOF2 (no, i haven't timed it) and its random in hitman2. So this does not just happen in just one game. Well anyway these are the solutions that i have tried.

Clear out all traces of my old SB Live! 5.1 in both the registry and it's drivers.
Updating video, audio and chipset drivers, bios alreadly up to date. I have tried direct x 8.1 and 9 and i have tried the catalyst 2.5 and 3 drivers for my video.
Changed the IRQ channels.
Changed the PCI slot.
I have uninstalling the audigy 2 and reinstall only the important stuff (drivers, eax console, surround mixer, bla bla bla)
Yelling at it (just joking)
And I have kept windows up to date.

My system spes are:
2.4GHz Pentium 4
Gigabyte P4 Titian GA-8IGX (i845g)
512mb ddr 333mhz memory
16x Lite-on DVD
80GB Baracuda IV HD
Old as the hills floppy drive
Radeon 9700 Pro
Audigy 2 (formally SB Live! 5.1)
Dlink 56k dial-up modem (feel the speed!)
Codgen 400W Power supply
4.1 turando speaker (getting the creative inspire 6600 6.1 speaker in a few days)
A4 Tech mouse
Standard looking keyboard
Hyundai 17" F770D monitor
Windows XP HE

Any ideas? Maybe something else in my system is conflicting with it.

I didn't buy this card to play my games in microsoft direct sound, so this is really starting to get annoying.

Looney

PS Even though this is a little OT, I would like to make a big G'Day to everyone because I have not been on this forum for a month (been on holiday in America, I'm an Australian by the way, if you haven't yet noticed

 

[BennyD]

my only suggestion is to fix it.

not sure there's alot you can do past what you've done already.

i'd suggest just a good old fasioned format and install the OS again, you could try installing the drivers before you actually put in the card.

other than that, get a better card

 

[Brian48]

When I had the original Audigy with my 8kha+, I experienced this problem too. None of the fixes worked and I eventually wounded up switching it out with my older Santa Cruz. Much to my surprise, this "squeal of death" still occured with the Santa Cruz (even after a clean reformat). It would occur exactly during moments that you've described. This lead me to believe that there was something else wrong with the system.

For me, I fixed it by upping the voltage on my processor, which was NOT overclocked at the time. After exhaustively going over one area of the computer over another, I came to the conclusion that that the PSU was not regulating enough juice to the CPU when the system was stressed. Although this did not cause the machine to reboot or exhibit any of the usual symptoms associated with an underpowered PSU (which it wasn't - Antec 350w), it was enough to make it appear as if it was the sound card causing the problem. Bumping the voltage up by .05 seemed to have corrected all stability problems regardless of which card I used after that.

Seeing as you have an Intel system and virtually everything is dependent on the +12v rail, I would try (as an experiment) running the system with the modem removed, plus unplugging any extraneous case fans or devices that might be drawing power from the +12v (leave the case open if you disable the case fans, of course). If it runs fine, then you know you probably have a problem with the PSU. Not familiar with the brand that you have, but looking at your specs, I wouldn't feel comfortable with a PSU that had a +12v rating of 15A or above (preferably 18A or above).