Windows 7: Crackling Sound

Hi all,

Am new to the forums so please be patient with me!

My machine is fairly old but runs Windows 7 32Bit perfectly fine. In fact I was amazed to find all the hardware is picked up fine and runs nearly as fast as XP did.

Have been using it for some time without issues but recently the sound has become what I would describe as crackly and breaks up. It happens when Windows boots and it plays the little intro tune, then when I log on its fine. Then if I play a Quicktime movie trailer for instance it crackles or Youtube etc.

My MSI motherboad doesnt have any downloadable drivers for Windows 7 so its using whatever is the defaults.

I have tried changing the sound settings to different qualities and also reducing it from 5.1 sound to 2 channel stereo but to no avail.

To make sure its not a hardware fault I have reinstalled XP and also Ubuntu with no issues at all.

I then reinstalled Windows 7 and immediately the crackling returns which puzzles me as I ran Windows 7 for months without issues.

I have also tried changing the emulation in the BIOS from AC97 to Azalia but again to no avail.

Any suggestions would be gratefully recieved.

Many Thanks


Paul.

Sounds like your on board sound isn't properly supported by windows 7. Did i read correctly that the crackling only happens on certain things? Also does your mouse lag or any applications lag when the crackling happens?

Hi, I can't recall if the mouse lags but certainly video playback is affected with the crackling and the video and sound will go out of sync.

The sound board not being supported did cross my mind but whats frustrating is, for the first 6 months of running Windows 7 the problem didnt occur. I even ran Windows 7 when it was a RC and didnt have any issues at all.

I think the problem might not be your sound. Perhaps you should do some tests to find out when it occurs. Do u have any trouble listening to an mp3 from your HD using WMP?

I am away from home at the moment but I can confirm the following times it DOES occur :

Playback of Quicktime movie trailers within the browser
Playback of Quicktime movie trailers using Qucktime player app
Windows startup sound
During capture or playback of DV footage within Pinnacle Studio 14
Playing Youtube videos within the browser(all browsers affected)
Playback of various videos formats within WMP or VLC

I "think" MP3 audio playback is ok but I will need to confirm. My initial reaction was to assume it was something to do with video playback and maybe codecs etc, but it does it on a clean install of Windows 7.

Thanks

Sounds like the issue might be with video? im not expert here im just trying to be useful, when i have these sort of problems i try un installing and reinstalling programs/drivers related to the problems etc.