Odd sound problem - computer slowdown

rook

I recently went away for a week, and before I left, my computer was fine. I would have no problems when playing sound or video.

Once I came back, however, any time I play anything involving sound (music, videos, streaming media off the internet, built-in windows sound effects) everything seems to lag a little (e.g. the mouse), and the sound itself is choppy and lagged. Videos would be the same.

I've scanned for spyware and viruses, and I've tried the odd registry-fix program (as far as free versions and free trials let me...). I've tried restarting my computer countless times but nothing has affected it.

Something is making my computer use more processing power for sound - if I have Task Manager open when a sound plays, the CPU usage gauge thing shoots up.

Any ideas? As far as I know, nothing happened to my computer while I was away. My 10 year old sister went on it, apparently, but I don't think she would have done anything.

cornbb

What sort of soundcard are you using? A generic onboard one or something more fancy? Sounds like a hardware/drivers problem to me.

Anti

Try uninstalling your soundcard drivers, then reinstalling them. Also make sure you have all the codecs you need. The k-lite mega codec pack will have everything you need.

here

rook

Anti wrote:

Try uninstalling your soundcard drivers, then reinstalling them.

How would I go about doing that?

(sorry if it's obvious, I've never had sound problems before...)

EDIT: Nor am I sure as to what type of soundcard I'm using...

In my device manager, the audio/video drivers there are as follows:
-Audio Codecs
-Legacy Audio Drivers
-Legacy Video Capture Devices
-Media Control Devices
-Realtek AC'97 for VIA (R) Audio Controller
-Unimodem Half-duplex Audio Device
-Video Codecs

Anti

okay so you have a realtek ac97 sound chip in the laptop. To uninstall the driver, right click the device ( realtek ac97 ) and select uninstall drivers. Then reboot. And install the new ones.


here is a link to the new drivers for you to install when you have rebooted.

but firstly install that codec pack i linked above, before you uninstall/reinstall.

rook

Okay, I've installed that codec pack... largely unproblematic although it hit a few snags with XviD (couldn't delete some existing files or something...) but I can still play XviD encoded files so that's okay.

I'll uninstall the driver then use the link you gave me.

btw, it's a PC not a laptop

thanks for your help, I'll post in a bit and say if anything's happened.

rook

Wow, okay! It's almost completely fine now Music from iTunes doesn't seem to be lagging at all...

I do have a massive uncompressed .avi file exported from Adobe Premiere Pro on my desktop which still exhibits the lagging, but before, my computer never lagged playing huge .avi files... but I suppose, it was exported when my computer was lagging, and it is a huge file... But even when Premiere is doing something that uses lots of processing power (as Adobe products so often do >_>) the music lags again... which I wouldn't mind if it weren't for the fact it never used to... any thoughts?

But thanks for your help! You've SAVED me.

Anti

More then welcome (^^,)