An answer to a question in another Thread.

I didn't want to hijack this thread: VMware Player - a Windows 8 Demo So I'm posting here.

King Arthur said:

Is the above SATA issue referring to the initial shipments of the Intel H67 chipset (B2 stepping) that had a problem where SATA ports degraded over time to the point of failure?

Yes.

It’s Limited to 3Gbps Ports Only

Interestingly enough the problem doesn’t affect ports 0 & 1 on the 6-series chipset. Remember that Intel has two 6Gbps ports and four 3Gbps ports on P67/H67, only the latter four are impacted by this problem.

Intel's DP67BG—The blue SATA ports on the right are 6Gbps, the black ones are 3Gbps. The Blue ports are unaffected by the bug.

Source almost half way down: AnandTech - Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis

More from Anandtech: AnandTech - Search Results for H67+intel

I am happy to report that my audio problem is solved. It was a driver problem after all. I had 'updated' the drivers in Device Manager a couple of times but each time it came back with ' You have the latest driver'. But this time I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled it from a link that the Dell guys had given me. And now things work as they should.

There must have been a tilted bit in my driver that was not noticed. And when trying to update, the updater apparently looks only at the driver header and does not check the hash. I am always reluctant to uninstall drivers and let the system find one at reboot because sometimes you end up with some rinky dink generic driver. But in this case I got it from Dell, so everything is ok.

Many thanks to everybody who was trying to help with my problem. At the end it was easier than we thought.

That is great news! I understand your caution.

I was about to steer you onto trying a VirtualAudio card (VAcard): VAcard PC software - Barix Wiki

Thanks Steve, the world is bright again and I can resume my tutorial production without having to run the videos 3 times thru Format Factory to boost the audio.

Your welcome Wolfgang, without all the extra processing it will be a bright day indeed!