Sound Problems and General slow down

[Slimline]

Hey, its only been 2 months since my last format and im already getting some serious annoyances. I really dont want to reformat as it will require me to back up 20+ gigs of data to dvd again. Whenever my computer is on for a while, and not even a long time (say 3 hours) and i try to listen to music, or any sound in general it chops. My comp is far from low end. I have a p4 3.0c 9800 ro and 512 of dual channel 400 mhz ram. I am running xp. I have a modded startup, and currently only emule, firefox, mccafe and other minute programs running. This shouldnt be a problem, but task manager only shows 70 megs of ram free? Also, whenver i say load a page or refresh the sound chops worse. Everything I try to do on my computer is laggy too. Games play ok, but the sound is choppy. I just updated my sound drivers. Not solved. I dont understand it. I hate having to restart every 2 hours as i lose my position in line on emule.

Also, I have run adaware scans, registry mechanic, defragged and also a virus scan. I dont know what is causing these problems. Any help would be VERY appreciated. This is becoming unbearable.

 

[meltdown75]

hi there... what's your sound hardware setup? also, i'm not familiar with emule, is that some sort of p2p software? your system deserves to have at least 1gb of ram imho, although i doubt that's your problem here.

 

[Slimline]

I am using onboard ac97 sound. It is a decent setup IMHO. It is capable of 7.1, I am using a 5.1 setup. I have never had problems before. I tried resotring, and no result, same problem. Yes emule is a sort of p2p network. Lately I have it running as much as possible. my board is a asus p4p800E deluxe. Thanks for the reply

 

[meltdown75]

No problem. Yep, there's nothing wrong with onboard sound. I actually yanked my Audigy Gamer out to try my onboard sound and I haven't went back to the Audigy as of yet - I can't notice a difference.

I guess the two main recommendations I would have for you are to shut everything down before you run any game(s) you will be playing. This is always best for performance - even on powerful setups. Some people even go so far as to shut down and restart before playing a game just to mazimize system performance. The other thing I would try is running a "driver cleaner" type program.

What games do you experience choppiness with?

 

[nqc2k]

Use task manager to find out what programs are eating up all of your ram and CPU.

Cont. Alt. Del, then click Processes.

 

[Slimline]

Sorry for the slow reply, I was away for the holidays. Which driver cleaner would you recommend? Also, as an update, I found some newer ac97 drivers and they seemed to help. It seems a bit better, though not perfect. And to nqc2k, I have tried checking the processes tab, but nothing is taking a sifgnificant amount of processing power nor ram. I added all the ram usage up and had approx. 160 megs 'missing'

 

[Paperlantern]

wait a minute, you have 512MB of ram and only 70MB is free? how many processes are running? Average systems have 25 - 30 processes running, some can go as high as 35 or 40, but more then that then you might have a severe spyware problem. The memory is denominated in K in the task manager, your telling me your says

Total 523808
Available 70000 - ish

Your number should be at least 200000 available on your system... something is hogging memory, i know p2p programs CAN be memory hogs, but post back with answers to above questions and we can go form there. If its crazy number of processes, try running a spyware scan, hit my site and run those utilities in the techs haven under the spyware section