Video / sound / general PC trouble

[spunge]

Since my last re installation of XP I've had video and audio problems.

Example: If watching a video clip and a sound is made from another application (such as an MSN alert), the video player will crash or display artifacts etc.

Rendering video gives artifacts, sound sometimes whitenoise's if certain applications are used at the same time.

As far as I know I have the latest nvidia drivers and sound drivers.

Another problem : sometimes games have fps lags (I get a constant 100fps but every second it freezes) possibly due to other programs running, is there any way to isolate programs so that it is the only one active, or so that it isn't affected by other applications?

Thanks for any help, formatting isn't an option yet.

 

[Asus]

What sound card do you have or is it onboard?
Same with the video card.

If you have a sound card I would try taking it out and putting it in a different slot (with the PC off of course). Might get assigned a different IRQ (IRQ conflict could be the issue).

 

[spunge]

I have an onboard sound card, i'll post /sysinfo when I can get on irc

No hardware has been changed since my latest install of XP, & since the problems started.

Edit

?18:12:34? {@spunge} (CPU1) AMD Athlon™ 64 Processor 3200+ @ 2009MHz (Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. nForce mainboard) (RAM) 2GB, 595.65MB free (HDDs) 154GB, 10.1GB free
?18:12:34? {@spunge} (VGA1) NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT (128MB), 1280x1024x32, 60Hz (OS) Microsoft Windows XP Professional (SP2), 53m 2s uptime, 8h 45m 36s uptime record

 

[Asus]

So you got a Gigabyte motherboard. Do you know the model?
I know CPU-Z shows the model. Also printed directly on the board in white letters between the slots.

 

[VirusType2]

I use something called Advanced Windows Care V2 Personal. I got it from Downloads.com. Under Tools, there is something called Startup Manager, and you can easily untick certain programs that will undoubtably be running in the background. Stuff you won't need running while you play your game. You also may have a gay program that keeps trying to access the internet for updates.

Using Advance Windows Care, you can untick programs like Auto updates for Java, and things like that, so they won't run. Whenever you want to reactivate these programs, just run AWC V2, and tick the boxes, hit apply, then restart your PC.

A little pain but, you can temprorarily disable tons of stuff like Antivirus, auto updaters, and other programs that run in the background. Normally, when Windows starts, it looks to see what programs have an auto start feature and it runs them. This just blocks this information from Windows, so they don't automatically start. You can easily revert back and just restart your PC.

Also, defraging a hard drive can fix a lot of stuttering issues!

Also, check that audio acceleration is high as you can go. (control panel/audio)

Finally, Onboard Audio uses CPU cycles, and getting a sound card will increase performance slightly, but it should definitely fix your sound issues that cause crashes. Sound cards have more sound channels and dedicated processors.

EDIT: Oh, and I think there is something with ATI drivers related to sound. It may be called WDM Integrated Driver, or that may be something else. 'Southe bridge' something or other? ... check into it at guru3d.com download section. Worth a try.

 

[spunge]

i'll try defragging, once you start can you cancel it? And how long does it take if it hasn't been done for .. years?

As for the programs, I don't think it's because of that, i've ended all processes and the problems are still there. A sound card would probably help but previous to installing XP again everything worked fine. So i'm almost certain it's a software issue.

 

[VirusType2]

i'll try defragging, once you start can you cancel it? And how long does it take if it hasn't been done for .. years?

lol. Thats probably your problem then. Do it.

It takes a while. You can let your PC go all night. I wait until I'm done using it for whatever because, yes, it takes a while and you won't be able to use your PC until it's done.

In my experience, interrupting it is NOT a good idea. HOwever, I suppose you could stop it while it's seeking for more fragmented files, after it has just performed a file move.

You don't want to interrupt it while it's moving a file because data loss could occur.

 

[Asus]

You can stop defragmenting if you use the UI. Just don't "end task" or restart your PC while it is going.

 

[spunge]

How long does it take though, should it be done in 6 hours?

 

[Asus]

Could be done in 6 hours or it might take longer. I just let mine go over night. It depends on a few things though.
1)how much data it needs to move
2)how much free space it has to work with

example:
It is possible that 70GBs of fragmented data on an 80gb drive would take more time to work with than 100GB on a 200GB drive.

 

[spunge]

yeah i'm going to, i'd just rather this pc be usable early on tomorrow morning.

I still doubt it will help, everything was fine, i installed xp, and some drivers and it wasn't working..

I'm sure i'll be using the wrong gfx drivers of something

 

[spunge]

I defragmented and did the forceware thing, I think it's fixed the majority of problems. So thanks Asus / sea / VirusType2