Sound Freezing Often Causes BSOD During Games

I have an Acer G7710 Predator PC that has Realtek audio on board. While playing Dragon Age and Titan Quest, the sound freezes and often causes a BSOD. It starts with the sound cracking and popping and rather quickly either freezes the system or causes a BSOD.

My first step was to install a sound card. I have a basic Sound Blaster Audigy Value edition card and installed it and disabled the onboard audio. To my surprise, it freezes exactly like the Realtek one did.

The odd thing is that if I reboot I can go back and play the games without any issues. This freezing seems to only occur if I start playing after the PC has been running 30 minutes or so. I have honestly just started rebooting every time before I play and it seems to help with the freezing.

I have read countless forums and tried various fixes and nothing works. I have honestly thought about buying an external sound card and seeing what happens. I have read many others who have this exact same issue and cannot find a solution.
This is the only issue I have with this PC but it's a nagging one for sure.

Yes - I have done the basics like updating drivers and the BIOS. I have installed the latest Realtek ones and the latest Creative ones. Since the same issue occurs with both, I tend to think that the issue is not the cards or the drivers. The question I keep asking myself is why does a reboot solve the issue. Whenever I boot up and start playing the game immediately, the issue does not occur. If I surf the web and do other things then play, the issue occurs almost every time.

It happens on all the games I have tried (all RPGs like Fallout, Oblivion, Dragon Age, Titan Quest, etc).

Lomai said:

Hi
Welcome to Seven Forums :)

Have you tried updating the drivers (newer BIOS if available on the support page) for your PC?

Regards

Hi

Try updating your DirectX Files - download

Regards

BigCTM said:

The question I keep asking myself is why does a reboot solve the issue. Whenever I boot up and start playing the game immediately, the issue does not occur. If I surf the web and do other things then play, the issue occurs almost every time.

Lomai said:

Hi
Welcome to Seven Forums :)

Have you tried updating the drivers (newer BIOS if available on the support page) for your PC?

Regards

It could be something that is loading after start-up that is causing the lockup.

Are you comfortable in digging into msconfig?

Sure - I use it regularly.

Lomai said:

Are you comfortable in digging into msconfig?

Finally, someone who is having the exact same problem as me! I've had precisely the same issue you describe since day one of owning my G7710. A few minutes into playing any game the audio gets choppy, then a few minutes later it locks up, the audio stutters, and a BSOD stating that "a clock interval was not received on a secondary processor within the allocated time interval" appears. Then after the memory dump/restart everything works fine. I have submitted a request to Acer to have this investigated, but I wanted to see if you were ever able to find a solution.

I have not found a solution yet. I honestly thought about contacting Acer but never did. I can live with it. I am just in the habit of rebooting every time I play a game and I do not have any issues.

Besides this, the G7710 has been great, especially at the price I paid back when Tiger Direct was clearing them out.

If you hear anything worthwhile from Acer, let me know. Maybe I should put in a support request also.

That's how I got mine too! Great deal, IMO. Some people were saying it was a dated machine, but you couldn't build your own machine that was water-cooled and had the expansion options for the price of the G7710. I will post on here if I find out anything.