Lagging, "Flickering" sound in videos and more

[tewas]

All right this one beats me. Few weeks ago the sound from internet videos and winamp started to "flicker". The first instinct was my computer is running at 100% or lack of memory. I checked my task manager and my cpu is about 25-30% with 16% going to chrome process (watching the daily show/youtube) and remaining in the system and other random processes. My RAM is at 60ish% and i have 5GB of memory. So i can eliminate lack of resources.
The next step was to check if my audio connections were ok. they were plugged in all the way in, my both, front and back connections have the same issue. Then it came surprise, the sound is fine if i'm watching video on VLC or Netflix streaming. So that eliminates any hardware issues/bad sound card etc.
So i though that might be issue with Flash since i have the most problems when watching you tube/hulu/the daily show, however the winamp also displays same issue when i'm browsing the web. So that solves problem with different codecs.

Now last thing i noticed was that if i leave videos in default size (at least the daily show) the sound is fine, goes thru problems when i go back to full size. I don't think this is the video card issue (i have nVidia 285 GTX) and the video from VLC and netflix play just fine, even if i have two of them on full screen (dual monitors)

Here is another small issue, even the video in the normal size lags if i start browsing the web via chrome

To solve this problem i tried to restore in few different restore points thinking maybe the driver became problematic after update. Rolled Web cam driver, Sound driver back, nothing changed.
Cleaned up internet temp files, No change


now i'm sitting and staring at the video that still have messed up sounds and i can't figure out why it is being so weird.

Any ideas are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Windows 911]

My Dell had this problem a few months back with the sound driver. It would lag, crack, and pop all the time, especially with streaming video. I went to Dell's driver download center and updated my drivers, but to no avail. I then went to the driver's main website, Realtek, and downloaded it from there. As if by magic, all the gremlins dissapeared. As for the video size, I am not sure.. Maybe work your way into Flash Player's Global Settings which is reachable by right clicking on a youtube or other flash video. I modified mine so it doesn't hold onto any LSO's or other temp files. It could even be a browser problem. I'm using IE9 RC and have had zero problems since day one with it. Hope this helps..

 

[tewas]

Well the flash problem should not affect winamp issues when browser is loading. At the same time, the driver should cause issues when i watch video on Netflix, VLC or use skype to talk.
Also the sounds is bad no matter what browser i use IE8 or Chrome

 

[Maverickender]

Might be a plug in problem? Thats about as tricky as my issue. Does this occur while playing games as well? Either PC games or internet games.

 

[tewas]

You know i haven't tried the games since the problem. I'll fire up one later tonight to see if the problem is there.

Also i noticed that Netflix lags just tiny bit when the seek bar shows up/hides. I'm starting to think it might be movement on flash screen/browser that eats resources and causes the lag.

 

[tewas]

Another update, probably the most strange one. So today in the morning i woke up to find that my computer had rebooted over night for some reason. I don't reboot my machine and the automatic updates wait for me to install manually.
So i log in and guess what, sound is find. No more lagging, everything is fine and i have no idea why it rebooted and why it got fixed.
For the record, i did reboot my system few times when trying to fix the problem few days ago

Well lets home it won't come back later

 

[tewas]

Crap. After another reboot, i needed to switch to UPS, the sound problem is back. I knew i'm gonna hate that mysterious fix