The Unsolvable Sound Loop Bug

[BrownsDawg]

I've had a sound loop bug now for about 5 months at least. I'll give a brief history, and explain some things I've tried to do to fix it, and I'd appreciate any help I get on this.

Here goes:

Problems started when I upgraded an HP 9695C Pavilion by adding a new SoundBlaster Live! Value card after formatting and installing windows2000. The system came with 98se installed, and I was tired of its instability. Anyhow, before adding the new sound card and win2k, I had previously installed a GeForce2 Pro and added some RAM when still running win98 and the HP-installed software. Well, sound loops began to happen in specific video games after the format and install of win2k and soundblaster, most notably Half-Life, where the most recent sound played would loop over and over again, and the system would lock up either resulting in an error message or a complete shut down.
To fix this, I tried getting the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers, the latest NVIDIA detonator drivers, the latest SoundBlaster drivers, reinstalling the games, updating directX, unplugging the sound card, updating windows, formatting, all to no avail. I had all but given up until I clean formatted and installed WinXP recently. I updated all drivers, and even flashed my BIOS with an update that HP provided on the website. The games worked for about 3 hours, and I thought the problem was fixed...but then the freezes and sound loops came back. I tried getting different versions of the detonator drivers, including 23.11, 21.85, and 15.70...all still had sound loops, and I would frequently get this error message:

the driver for the display device was unable to complete a drawing operation. please check with the device manufacturer for a driver update. the display driver for NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS/GeForce2 Pro seems to be responsible for the system instability

I've looked in my BIOS to see what there is to tweak, and couldn't find much. My mobo doesn't support AGP4x by the way. I don't know what to do anymore, and I'd love to see someone try and figure this one out.

Here are some specs, fyi:
AMD Athlon 850mhz
256mb pc133 RAM
AMD 751 (VIA VT82C686A/B) Mobo
GeForce2 GTS/Pro 64mb
SoundBlaster Live! Value
Windows XP Pro

Thanks

~me

 

[FPSguy]

I had a similar problem that sometimes manifested itself in sound loops. You could try disabling sound hardware accelleration in the Multimedia properties. There are a bunch of other steps you can try at Microsoft's Sound Troubleshooter <http://support.microsoft.com/Support/PersonalUser/Content/Sound/default.asp> and in this KnowledgeBase article <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q263047>. Turning off hardware accelleration fixed the problem for me, but I was unhappy with that solution so I bought a new sound card. The new sound card fixed the problem.

 

[KrustyVT]

XP and VIA chipsets, along with NVidia chip-based graphics cards and the Creative Soundblaster card have some serious issues unless you do the driver updates in a certain way. Unfortunately I can't give you a direct link because this site is down, but searching for "Via 4 in 1" or "Via 4.37" or something to that effect should find the appropriate document with step by step directions on updating the drivers. It involves running the 4-1 setup routine, as well as going into the Device Manager and updating some of the drivers yourself. Here's the link to the website that has the article, hopefully it will be back up shortly -

http://www.xp-erience.org

-=K=-

 

[BrownsDawg]

I used the old via updates when I had win2k, but I've read somewhere that you don't need them for XP...

 

[KrustyVT]

I have a friend who had some serious sound/display and general computer problems (like you describe) on his AMD setup. Following the instructions for the 4 in 1 drivers on the website I posted has completely fixed his computer. Unfortunately, the website is still down ...

-=K=-

 

[BrownsDawg]

which OS?