Audio skipping on an Acer Aspire 1520

Hi, I'm having problems with my laptop having installed Windows 7 on it recently (I've previously been using Windows XP).

The laptop's an Acer Aspire 1520.

Now when I'm playing music through any media player (from both MP3s on the hard drive and CDs) there are frequent stutters, crackles and little skips every 10 to 20 seconds which is absolutely doing my head in! I listen to most of my music through headphones so it's really noticeable

It's got:

• AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3000+ 1.8GHz
• 1.25GB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce FX Go5700
• Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)

I'm not the most technologically minded of folk so I'm really stuck as to what I can do to fix this and apologise for all the necessary detail I've probably left out! I'm gutted it's not working as music's what I use my laptop for about 75% of the time!

When I first fired Windows 7 up there was no sound at all but that seemed to fix itself after a short while? I still had the CD that came with the laptop and reinstalled what drivers I could off that, I've also tried going to the Acer website to download the sound driver thingy from there but it's made no difference. I read on another thread to try disabling it via 'device manager', restart the computer, then enable it again but that's not changed anything either.

I don't recall there ever being a problem with the sound on XP and if someone out there has an idea how to sort this I'd be very (very) grateful!

Thanks in advance

Thanks very much for that, I've defragmented my computer using Raxco Perfect Disc 10 and everything that boots unecessarily when windows starts up has been disabled. I think everything's pretty much okay with general optimization. I'm loving Windows 7 so far this is just the last niggle that needs sorting!

The audio driver's been installed from the Acer website, although it doesn't work straight away... and Windows 7 then reinstalls it for me having identified a problem? The music plays but unfortunately the skipping and stuttering's still there.

I've had a look at the BIOS but find it a scary place to be honest and I wouldn't be confident making any changes to try and sort things out (nor would I know in the first place what would likely make a positive difference!).

I was wondering about external sound cards, like the kind that slot in the side of the laptop and then can be left in. Admittedly I know little about these... Could this be a solution to the problem? Or would whatever's messing the one up at the moment likely do the same to another? If a new sound card could be the answer could anyone recommend a decent one?

Any further help's very gratefully received!

Success!!

Thanks for planting the BIOS seed... I've just been onto the Acer website and updated the BIOS for my laptop. I sat nervously for a minute or two wondering if I'd ever see it working again... but it's sprung back into life and now when I play music on it there's no more skipping!!

Cheers torrentg. You're my new best mate.

Awesome. I'm really glad you got this fixed!

I was about to tell you not to get a new audio device of any sort because it would most likely exhibit the same problem.

That Bios line in my last post was actually a later edit. I didn't include it straight away. So you lucked out. And also good move on your part with the bios update.

Enjoy Win7!

erm.. about the bios thinggy, i just want to make sure a few things before i attempt to do the same things, and before i gave up on Windows 7 for my Acer apire 4540, i had a same problem with sound playback, it just give me a crappy slowmo, crankky sound when im playing music from my hard drive, i've installed the lattes driver for windows 7 from acer website but no luck.

then i stumble with this post, prosthetic, you said you did update your laptop bios right? is it when you using windows 7 os or windows xp? and did you update the bios by clicking the NBLG103.exe file from the bios folder or using command line from boot menu?

i relly need help soon with this problem, it drives me crazy and make me think to install xp when 7 is so sweet looking on my machine....

Hey wweerrxx,

Sorry to hear about the problems you're having, I understand completely how frustrating it is! I can tell you step by step what it was that I did when I was at the same point (i.e. having installed all the latest drivers from the Acer website but still having problems with playing music in Windows 7)

I went onto the Acer driver website (whilst in Windows 7)

Acer Europe - Service & Support, Drivers & Utilities, Downloads

Then I chose 'Acer Aspire' from the 'Acer notebooks' drop down menu then clicked on my model (1520)...

The next page gave me options for downloading 'drivers and utilities' and also 'BIOS and guides'

I clicked on the 'Bios v1.15' link and saved the file, I forget exactly what I did after that but I'll probably have double clicked on the setup or install type file once it was saved to initiate it? Can you tell I completely lucked out with this?? The computer then restarted (I was worried I'd killed it) then when I tried playing music everything played like it should.

Hope this is of some use to you, good luck!