Realtek, Windows 7 64RTM Crackle/static/popping

[Markforu99]

Everyone having problems try this...

I was using a Linksys WMP300n wireless network card. I've checked with many different forms and did find one forum that had a program that ran a dpc latency spike program. Well anyway I checked on the Linksys Form WMP300N causing dpc latency spikes - Wireless Adapters - Linksys Community Forums
And I called Linksys and found out that the wireless network is NOT compatible with Windows 7 and never will be!!! But my DPC spikes ran all in the red zone up at 24,000 which normal is around 75-150. So I disabled my wireless controller and come to find out all my realtek crackle popping sounds are now gone!!! I've read on a few other forums beside this one that sometimes other wireless internet controllers and also video cards can cause this same problem...so it's NOT a Realtek Driver Problem but the DPC using up all the processing with the CPU causing video and audio to have periods of locking up playing games (Video) and Popping noises because of the new Windows 7 and the way it uses older Video and wireless network devices!!! All is well now!!! Hope this helps some of you!!! Here is the link to the DPC checker in case some of you want to check your system DPC Latency Checker

 

[AaronDude]

Yeah I thought it was the graphics card and wireless card as well. I disabled them and the spikes still happened after just a bit of use although it was in the 160-200 range for a while. Other times I can run it for several hours playing a video and it will be fine but it always returns. Usually it does it after a little time but it can sometimes take awhile Could it be the motherboard? It seems as though acer only checks what I tell them to. They're the experts they should be able to diagnose the problem.

 

[Markforu99]

AaronDude

Well Aaron, I not to sure you are with computers but, as far as motherboards and drivers, my system is a hp m7480n (which is about a 4 year old system) but I have done many upgrades suck as a NVIDIA 9800 GT (the one with 500meg rather than the one with 1gig). But I don't trust drivers that come from factory or even the drives that Windows supplies. They can be outdated even by the time Acer releases the drivers, they can already be outdated!!! So lets say you are running a Intel Processor with a Intel chipset, I go out to Intel and get the drivers for my chipset which includes usually your Bus drivers for USB and your PCI and PCI-E slot if equip. If your running a AMD Processor AMD & Radeon have merged together over the years, so I would look on the AMD site for ALL drivers for the Radeon video card. Another thing you can do is find out what motherboard is in your system and try to find Windows 7 drivers for it too!!! As I said in my post with that program I used, my highest spike was 24,000 but after disabling my wireless card you can get high spikes just by closing different windows or programs, which I am hitting spikes of 584 and as low as 24...just even typing I see spikes popping into the 100's but with my wireless card hooked up a maintained a constant Latency of up over a 16,000 which wasn't good at all!!! So as I said, I don't know what Acer system your running, whether you have on board video or onboard wireless, I don't know if we are talking about a PC or a laptop or what you max spike is at system idle for either the video or for your wireless...Okay I just looked at you specs on what you put down for video you have a GeForce gt 220, I myself tried running that card in my system, but I had to drop back to the 9800 GT for the one reason my mother board could NOT handle the Bus Speed that the card required. Doing Benchmarks on my system from it and having a NVIDIA 9600, the GT 220 would blow my 2D graphics out of the water but on the 2D graphics and the DirectX my 9600 card outperformed the GT 220!!! The GT 220 is a EXCELLENT CARD!!! But my Bus speed was either a 400mhz or a 800mhz bus...I can't remember?!!! So that card itself dropped my whole system WAY DOWN!!! It would be a Excellent card to put with the new Intel 7, 8 core processor...which would require upgrading my mother board from socket 775 and my old Dimm DDR PC3200 memory to a DDR3 which has a Higher bandwidth performance increase, up to 1600 MHz per spec!!!
But my main question is...did removing the wireless or disabling your wireless network controller at least get rid of your popping in your sound? And do you have the Latest Realtek drivers installed from Realtek for Windows 7?
See as I said...simple things such as opening a browser window or even something running in the background such as virus software can give you small Latency spikes, but my Linksys card gave me HUGE SOLID SPIKES NO LOWER THAN a 16,000 so that told me right off there was NO WAY I was even going to be able to play sound with out the old record type popping like I had a scratch in a old LP record!!! I myself HATE resource hogs such as Norton and currently I'm been just running Microsoft Essentials as my virus protection along with Advance System Care Professional to clean the system of spyware...Another thing I was having problems with was the New Alien vs Predator game...with that wireless LAN card in the system...I was getting video lockups or 30 second stuttering ever so often in the game...now I don't have a problem.
I hope some of this info helps you, and I do know with that GT 220 card that you got a good card...and I would Love to have it back on my system but with my slow bus speed that I am running at the time just doesn't support that card and would chop the heck out of my 3D graphics...but soon it will be time to upgrade to the Windows 7 3.33mhz processor and let the fun begin!!! But for having only a 160-200 range in your Latency it's far from the 16,000-24,000 that I had!!!
Take Care and feel free to write back!!!
Mark

 

[AaronDude]

Yeah I would still get the pops and studdering and overall garbled sound when disabling those. It'll be ok for a while but it happens eventually. I even tried linux mint, and used their drivers same problem. Acer doesn't know either, I just want a working computer at this point. The machine also tends to lag a bit after several hours too. That's all I can tell you. I've said it all before. Anyway I'm back to using my gateway laptop and it has absolutely no problems with that. In fact I'm sure it can run games better even with it's old integrated intel graphics. I'm just saying something is wrong with that machine and the manufacturer just doesn't want to admit it. They say I'm doing something wrong or corrupted the OS. Maybe I am but I've owned many computers and have never had a problem like this.

Yeah 160-200 is good if it actually stayed there but just running the computer will have it go off the charts every second after some time. The same thing happens in Linux I'm sure, but I just can't find a checker for it that confirms it. I'm thinking something gets hot and malfunctions. I just have a gut feeling it's the motherboard. If it was something else I would guess that disabling the graphics card , disabling the wifi card and cd drive would keep it from doing that.

Anyway thanks for checkin' on me

 

[Markforu99]

No Problem, all I wanted to do is figure out what the heck was the matter with my system and followed EVERYONE'S answers but always came up with the same old thing!!! It wasn't until I downloaded that program and found out the numbers of things that something was a HOG...and come to find out it was my Linksys card and Linksys says their wont ever be a update for it!!! Sucks going from 278 megabit to 100 with a wire but I do a lot with sound and video and just HAVE to sacrifice!!!! But wanted to post what I ran in to after dealing with MONTHS of pain!!! But Yeah, my guess would be a Mother Board...Maybe time to upgrade? And I wouldn't trust anything ANY company says!!! Of course their going to cover their Butts!!! I'm just glad Linksys was up front with me!!!

 

[AaronDude]

It just gets pretty erratic after just setting there even for a while. It can be as low as 120 or off the charts. If I wait even longer it really gets up there to as low as maybe 50-1000 and several off the chart reds in a row. It's really different second to second and it doesn't seem to have any reason behind it. My gateway laptop stays at around 1,000 all the time unless I do something to bump it up or bring it down.

Yeah I agree acer is just trying to cover their butt. It's only about four or five months old and have always been having this problem. The graphics card is definitely a problem for this machine but I don't think it is the problem. It'll take a while with that disabled and using the integrated intel graphics. I'd send it into acer again to look at ,but I know what they do(nothing but reload OS) and I wouldn't expect the fourth time to be the charm. I don't know how many times they'll pay to ship it back. I already paid once. This machine can get really costly and time consuming. I guess my only option is to do that until the warranty is up and be left with a very expensive block. I just don't know why a company as big as Acer won't take care of me. I asked them every time I sent it in if they could just give me a refurb and they told me that is not possible and to just send it in. They give me the run around telling me to call back at different times only to hear the same thing again from them. All's I can tell people is to not buy Acer. I should of went with an HP that would of costed just about as much but I thought a matching pair of Acer products(the monitor) would look nice and be cool. Obviously I put my trust in the wrong company.

All I know at this point is it's not a windows 7 problem. I wish it was it so I could at least use this computer for something.

I've been looking at a PS3 for my gaming, web surfing, blu ray and music listening needs. The only thing I can do on this machine i'm using right now(the crappy acer desktop) is surf the web. Of course any media with video or audio is gonna suck on this acer. The problem with the PS3 is it's hard to get right now. I've been checking stores for two weeks and can not find one online or offline that is actually being sold at a reason price. I'm sorry but 370 bucks or more for a 300 dollar machine is not something I'm gonna pay to these jerks trying to make a bunch of money off of desperation. Hey Final Fantasy 13 looks good btw. So I guess I can get my machine when it's in stock again in places and it would do everything I wanted at half the cost. It cost me 650 bucks for this machine but trying to fix it has easily costed 120 more than that(shipping, sound card, different speakers). It's unfortunate that I'm probably never going to get to play them home made RPGs for PC though. That was one of the main reasons to get this. I mean there's people making fantastic RPGs for PC and are probably even more fun than the high budget expensive ones. I just like the old school stuff I guess. However I can adapt to Final Fantasy 13 and sure I would enjoy that too.

HAH! I realize I ramble on too much about the same stuff.

 

[Markforu99]

No worries, as you can tell I do the same thing...just as I said before, even just typing on a USB keyboard can raise those spikes!!! One Idea would be...how about your virus software? Is it running Norton (which is a system hog), do you have your indexing features turned off? To do that double click on Computer in start menu and the right click on your c drive and uncheck the indexing box. It will do slower file searching on the drive but will help in the end beings that when system is at idle it can start the indexing up. Another thing I don't like about (Factory Installs) is the added things such as automatic updates from Acer which lets you know when updates are due (Not the Microsoft Updates) but the Acer updates!!! Also I go into my msconfig under my Start Button/Programs/Accessories/and in there is the "run" command Uncheck all the crap that is marked (under the "Startup") Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, also uncheck and get rid of the Quicktime updates and anything such as Acer may put in there to do to do their updates. I know with my HP came the HP Advise!!! What a piece of crap!!! That program alone would cause my system to lag, even moving my mouse would be a chore when system went to idle. Don't uncheck everything in there tho!!! You do need some things!!!! Java Update is okay anything marked Microsoft is okay...but Acer along with other company's like to put their nice pretty toolbars and other things on your desktop that just like to hog system resources and in the background whether the system is at idle or not it has them running!!!
Another thing to try is run that program I gave you and do a hold on CTRL+ALT+DEL, I'm sure you you have done that before, but go down to Start Task Manager...But in their go to your Processes Tab and click the CPU once so it shows a down carrot in the box and watch if there may be a program that is bouncing or that relates to your High Spike demand when system is at idle!!! The the next thing to try in there is clicking Memory (which right now my Highest is Firefox)..but I have it running, so duh that would be using up my memory!!! But your sying you getting high red zone spikes topping your chart and one place to look is to see what program may be kicking in causing it!!! My guess would be a update search of some sort or your Indexing Service...as I said SHUT THAT THING OFF!!!
On another note disable your Hibernate feature that comes with all versions of windows!!! It's never been worth a crap in any of the windows I have EVER used...it's just another resource Hog and takes up hard drive space!!! You can follow this link to do that http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/819-hibernate-enable-disable.html I don't mind my computer going to sleep at night and touching the mouse or keyboard to wake it up...but the hibernate loves to run in the background and takes snapshots of what your sytem is at so if you do let it set there long enough it has a total look of being able to snap back up for you which is a slow process Sleep is a much faster process and I set my system to sleep when it shows idle for 1 hour. But before I used sleep my computer ran 24/7 and just had my monitor shut down after 20 minutes of no use.
Another Bad program (sometimes) that comes with factory systems is a program called GoBack!!! The program is nice, but once again is a resource hog because it wants to snapshot your system constantly so in case of problems you can "GoBack" to what your system was before you had changed something...about the same as Norton!!! It's JUNK!!! That's why Windows has it's own neat little program installed called "System Restore"!!! Much more efficient and takes care and makes system backups when installing programs or updates or when starting you system up for that day...if you don't already leave your system running 24/7.
There must be a solution to your random (HIGH) spikes!!! It has to be something that kicks in. in the background which your just not aware of even when your system is at idle!!!!
If you would like to take a snapshot of your Task Manager and let me run through the startup part of it...it could tell me a lot!!! To do that is to hit you print screen button and the go to Start Menu/ Programs/ Accessories/ and hit the "Paint" feature. Right click in paint on the blank page and paste the snapshot, save it as a jpg file to your desktop and send it along with this forum by scrolling down just a bit on your reply page and hit the Manage Attachments link...Mind you, you may have to take the bottom edge of your task manager down so I can see the whole thing...but would like to at least see what you have running and what's eating at your CPU and Memory that would pop in and cause such a spike!!! I still say it's either a Norton Program, Hibernate function, or system indexing service, or a Acer Installed crap program like I had on my HP that would run out every 20 mins or so to see if there was some sort of update!!!! Also would like a snapshot of your msconfig of only the Start Up tab so I could see what you would be safe with disabling in there...It would give me a heck of a lot better info on your system!!! It sucks how you have shut down that Video card!!! That is one BOMB of a card!!!! As long as you have the Bus speed to support it and a HUGE power supply to handle it!!!! I had to drop in a 750 watt power supply because of all the items that are on this old system!!! But like I said, if you want to take some Print Screens and paste them into Paint also Windows 7 has a Snipping Tool, but I still do things the old fashion way may also give me some ideas of what the heck you got running in the taskbar by your clock if you want to hit the up carrot down there by the clock I may be able to make out a few of those icons to!!! Which also leads to another good point...That Flag down there...you want to left click on it and Open Action Center, Go to Maintenance and see if Backup is currently being Monitored!!!! It's ANOTHER junk program that windows installed so you can make Backup DVD's of your System in case you want to transfer your important files from one system to another brand new PC...Just another piece of junk that needs disabled and turn off notification about it!!! One more final thing...Widows Update, go to the Change Settings on Windows Update and under the Important Updates Menu, hit that drop down arrow and chose the 2nd line from the bottom that say "Check for updates but let me choose whether to download and install them!!!! I've had more problems with making DVD's and have Windows Update kick in and start downloading a file in the background and wanting to install it!!!! Another Pain In My Butt!!! Ends Up Putting a Glitch in My DVD Movie that I'm burning!!!
But Keep me informed...I'm really interested in getting your system running correct and maybe getting rid of some of the JUNK that companies put on there just to cause you needless slow downs so they can charge you for help later down the line!!! Personally I clean boot my system with Windows 7 Ultimate have 45 processes running and I just got METRO 2033 (new Game the other day and it ROCKS!!!!) I love the Blaster games of just killing and annihilation of things!!!

Take Care!!!
Mark

 

[Markforu99]

Oh sorry forgot one step...On the disabling of Indexing: To do that double click on Computer in start menu and the right click on your c drive ***(Left Click on Properties)*** and uncheck the indexing box!!!!
Sorry about that!!!!

 

[AaronDude]

Yeah I have no antivirus software running. I uninstalled the mccoffee or whatever it's called. I have the windows defender and firewall services disabled. I have the windows update manager disabled. I did this when I got my computer back for the third time. I unchecked the indexing thing for my C drive, just did this. The thing is I don't know if it is all of this junk that comes with the computer. I got crackling in Linux Mint too after a while but I can't seem to find a tool to confirm that it's some sort of the same problem. The onboard graphics won't work with linux mint so I can't try that. The graphics card uses the linux nvidia drivers btw. Keep in mind I'm only running one OS at a time so it certianly sounds like something is broke on this thing. Right now I'm using the GT220 card in windows 7 and like I said it makes the problem worse but it still happens anyway even if I'm using the onboard graphics. As I'm typing this I'm not getting too many red bars(although I should be doing it completely idle) and the ones in the red are low. It just seems kind of random. A week ago I left the computer with a DVD Running and came back about an hour an a half later and looked at the latency checker and it didn't go past 2,000. I'm going to try some of those other things suggested. I have nothing to lose this machine is just a block to me anyway right now. I would like perfect video and audio because I'm a perfectionist but I'd settle for just decent if I could. Like I said it's just very erratic. A person on another board thought it could be a bad system timer, whatever that is. I'm really hoping it's a driver or software problem but it's looking less and less like that all the time. I've disconnected the USB mouse and keyboard and that didn't have any effect. The hardrive is always blinking every second or so in windows 7 and doesn't do it in linux but I don't think that would be the problem obviously because of how it functioned in linux. I'll try some more of those things you suggested and do some rereading.

 

[AaronDude]

Doing anything that makes the computer work such as opening a couple programs and messing around with them things will raise the bars like you said. However even after letting the computer sit for five or ten minutes after closing everything down it continues to stay high. It will stay low for maybe a second or two, it will go down to 130-230 or so but then it jumps right back up into the red around 12000 sometimes. Right now after about fourty five minutes of use it just jumps into the high yellow mostly and that is not audible but I would still like to get it down. It seems to be audible however if it's about 3000-4000 or more.

 

[Markforu99]

Yeah, with all these problems...it seems your doing the right things, the only other idea I have is disabling the on board LAN or LAN card because it will go out and ping the network every so often, I don't mean to just unplug it but to actually disable it in device manager, it's weird it's doing it under a couple different operating systems!!! And yes I'm a perfectionist with Video and sound quality working with HDMI and Dolby 5.1 Video and Audio and then you have stupid popping going on in the background!!!! It drove me freakin' Nutz!!!! But it all happen when I switched to Windows 7 either 32 bit or 64 and then I found the problem was the wireless Linksys Network Card...but I yanked that card and running on just LAN now and watching movies and listening to music just fine now...Sorry was hoping I could give you some help!!! My guess would be something in the Motherboard or you got something pinging the net!!! Maybe even a cookie type virus? It's like ET wanting to call home...as I said, to run that video card you must have one hell of a system!!! What Acer model is it anyway...would Love to study the motherboard in it and find out reviews and what processor are you running on that thing? One other thing, I think you said you disabled that NVIDIA card, but have you tried just removing it out of the system and running on the onboard graphics in windows? That card is designed even being disabled with you still plugged into it that your going to get graphics out of it...it has it's own processor built into it and I'm wondering if it could still be hogging up the bus?

 

[AaronDude]

Here's the specs from newegg Newegg.com - Acer Aspire AM3802-U9062 Core 2 Quad Q8300(2.50GHz) 8GB DDR2 1TB NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit - Desktop PCs

A guy on tiger direct did a review and said he returned it twice and got two new computers(don't know how 'cause acer won't let me do that). Anyway he says the sound is crap on both. Then on a cnet user review a guy said the gt220 graphics card is not compatible with windows 7. Personally I don't think it has anything to do with the setup, I think I just got a rotten tomato. I don't really feel comfortable taking out the card. I've replaced a cpu fan and modem before but that was on a cheap emachine ten years ago. It did not go too smoothly. The card would not slip into the slot easily like I thought and I had to litterally grab on to it hard and touch all the stuff on the card to get it in. It worked after that but for two years it was making loud whistling sounds. Besides, Acer does not want me messing in there or they would find an excuse to void my warranty.

Tell you what I'm going to do. I'm just going to read a well thought out letter to every acer rep I talk to if they let me talk. I already got one written out. It is worth a shot I guess. I have no confidence in their repair center. Basically it's a letter pleading for them to send me a refurbished computer even if it's a cheap emachine.

 

[Markforu99]

Yeah, I understand What a pain it is to get that card in and out!!! It's a very long card and the fan setup on it makes it a major pain to release the catch that holds the PCI-E clip that holds that card into that slot!!!
Well, I have a couple of problems with the review you sent me on that system!!! It's that guy Mike first of all who says: "I've been using this computer for 2 weeks now and overall it's pretty solid, but several little problems and headaches have prevented a better score. Mainly, the CD/DVD drive has given me issues. It causes freezing in certain programs and has been operating slowly or sporadically in others. Because of this I have to send it back to Acer for repair; they won't just send me a new drive. Their version of Windows 7 comes preinstalled with a ton of bloatware that took almost an hour to remove. The power supply is barely enough to power the components included, let alone future expansions." Personally, (It may not be your CD/DVD drive on this one Mike!!!), but for poor Mike...yes I can understand a little more about this system!!!
The "slowly and sporadically problem is being caused by at least 3 different things!!! One he mentions is: preinstalled with a ton of bloatware, okay Mike you got rid of the extra junk that I told you about (AaronDude) (Good Job Mike!!!) But here is a VERY BIG BUTT on this system!!! It only has a 300W Power Supply?!!!! I'm sorry but WTF!!!
Your running a Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300(2.5GHz) Newegg.com - Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300 Yorkfield 2.5GHz 4MB L2 Cache LGA 775 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor - Processors - Desktops Thermal Design Power 95W!!! Now lets take a look at that Graphics Card!!!! Power Trip Pay close Attention to these words!!! Maximum Graphics Card Power (W)58W, Minimum System Power Requirement (W)300W!!! On my box from the factory on that card, it said 300W min. too, but, 750 Watt power supply was Recommended!!! With everything I had on my system at the time, I blew my 450 Watt power supply 2 days after installing that card!!!
Okay, I'm not really going to sit here and try to do the math for Acer...But you have a system with at least, I'm sure, one case fan...if maybe not 2 would be nice...you're running a DVD drive (Hummm how many Watt's are we talking here?) Now lets throw in that 1TB SATA 5400RPM (How many more Watts there? Let's thank God they didn't put a 7200RPM in there!!!) A motherboard that I have no interest in even trying to take a look at at this moment, BUT how many Watts there?!!! Not sure if you have ever put your hand on a hard drive after it gets done pumping data to a CPU, but lets just call that very warm which = WATTS!!! Maybe not much but it's still pulling it!!! I'm sure they didn't go "Green" with this hard drive!!!
Come on Acer!!! What the heck kind of system are we putting together here?!!! I Build systems for a living!!! I might be a little crazy, but I think of the customer first and put them in a NICE 750-950 Watt power supply so they can have all the add-on's they want in the future such as Blue Ray? Or even a second Burner? Maybe another Hard Drive? I'm guessing that motherboard takes at least a good 40-60 Watts of power for LAN, Sound, and on-board Graphics...not to forget about the Gigs of RAM they got on it too!!!
Your running a Intel Core 2 Quad Q8300(2.5GHz) with a (4MB L2 cache, 2.50GHz, 1333MHz FSB) but why the hell did Acer put in DDR2 Memory that runs at a bus speed of 800mhz? You should be running DDR3 like they do with their new system AX3810-U1802 Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium , 64-bit version, Intel® Core™2 Quad Processor Q8300 (4MB L2 cache, 2.50GHz, 1333MHz FSB), 6GB (2/2/2/0) DDR3 SDRAM, 1TB SATA hard drive, Super-Multi drive, multi-in-one card reader, Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X4500, gigabit LAN, V.92 modem...Oh did you make a mistake with the Acer Aspire AM3802-U9062? And with your new and Improved AX3810-U1802, what the hell is the deal with the 220 Watt power supply?!!! Oh well, wait a second...they didn't drop in the big beefy NVIDIA GeForce GT 220!!! Their running with on-board graphics!!! Good for them!!! I bet they got a PCI-E slot on it!!! OOOP's just looked at the specs and guess what people?!!! They sure do!!! Let's drop that NVIDIA GeForce GT 220 in this system and see how fast we can flame a power supply up?!!!
I'm sorry, but I say if a company is going to build a system for the people that want it to last them the next 2-10 years of their lives...let's at least do it right!!!

Last time I put a 220W power supply in something that size was when a Pentium 2 was "State of the art!!!!"

There you go people!!! More Crap on the market from Acer!!!!

AaronDude, sorry to hear about your problems here but now I got a little more understanding of it all!!! It seems Acer wants to be in a really close competition with that other Junk E-Machine on the market!!! Their slowing your bus speed down by using the DDR2, which is making that nice GeForce card of yours dog like I told you it did on my system when I first put it in!!! No wonder you got spikes!!! Hell your running a system that has a bus speed of 1333mhz at 800mhz because of stupid companies and I haven't even looked to see if you can drop DDR3 in it!!! The other slow down is running a hard drive that puts out data at a slower rate 5400RPM just doesn't do it for me...I better be able to pump data at least at 7200RPM (MAJOR DIFFERENCE)...but that still doesn't really solve the sound issue at hand, but I'll give you the one and exact idea of what it is (and I know you don't want to hear it!!!) It's that GeForce card!!! That Baby wants to run!!! And it don't want NO 800mhz Bus!!! There's where your spikes are coming from!!! That Card is a Greyhound locked up in a 4 foot by 4 foot pen 24/7!!! Hate to say this, but it doesn't look good on being able to upgrade to DDR3 on that motherboard...I still don't know what it is...but I got 2 options for ya. 1) Replace that Motherboard and drop 4-6 gigs of DDR3 on it depending on what you want to do with the system as far as gaming or whatever or pull that GeForce 220 out (save it for another day) and put in a Geforce 9800GT and I recommend the PNY Brand with 512MB of GDDR3 Ram Amazon.com: PNY XLR8 9800 GT EE 512MB PCI-Express 2.0 DVI + DVI Graphics Card VCG98GT5EEXEB: Electronics Don't go with the 1024MB, there is problems sometimes with those cards because of the large RAM...and then the other upgrade you would HAVE to do changing that card out would be putting in a bigger power supply!!! At Least a 750W.
Sorry to be the barer of the bad news but company's just don't give a crap or have the intelligence or should I say...they just want to keep it cheap and maybe you wont notice...but I bet that system just dogs right out and will stutter if you put a game such as the new Predator Vs Alien or even METRO 2033 on it because of that damn bus speed and then you will still have the sound issue...which as that one guy told you it was maybe a matter of your timing being off...well buddy that's what I'm telling ya. Your Bus speed is all messed up with that fast processor and that fast video card running in a slow lane behind a bus going down the street and it stopping at every corner to drop someone off!!! No wonder your sound pops and skips and your system will all the sudden lag for a moment...it's getting bottle necked!!!

Mark

 

[AaronDude]

Well I sold it to my mommy and daddy for 200 bucks with the monitor before I read your post. I'm just relieved and happy just to get out of my site. Acer really POed me today. I was on the phone for a couple hours and everyone was just giving me the run around. They said there was nothing wrong with the computer the first three times it was sent in. I made a comment that their technicians don't know a thing to one of the guys I talked to and he was trying to tell me they don't make mistakes. He told me the warranty is for repair and not replacement. So that means I can't even get a freakin 200 dollar refurbished emachine from them. If your computer can't be repaired I guess you're just SOL. So long story short I'm through with that computer and I am just going to continue to use my old gateway laptop. Mommy and Daddy are sending it in again under my name, but it's now theirs. Heck, they might like it or be able to give it away to someone or something. I'll get a PS3 to play games, movies, music on. I'm sure sony will stand behind that if it breaks. In fact I hear they almost always send a refurb unlike acer. I guess that what happens when I put my trust into a crooked, low quality, Taiwan based company.

 

[Markforu99]

AaronDude, Yeah, May that system rest in piece!!! Or Should I Say....Pieces!!! Acer has ding bats working for them!!! I just CAN'T Believe the crap their trying to turn out!!! It's about as bad as Microsoft XBox 360!!! It's designed to go out!!! I have kids, and Microsoft says the 360 should only run at 4 hours at a time and be shut down for 8 hours...I'll tell ya...THAT'S A BUNCH OF BS!!! Try to tell that to a kid who's 15, 16, or 17 that has all his friends over, (for all night marathons), and try to tell those kids you can only play the X-Box for 4 hours and stay off of it for 8...oh well, let them Red Ring the thing!!! We are on our 4th XBOX 360 now because those things are designed to go bad!! Just one more example of "Big Company" vs "Little Person"!!!
If your parents could get that video card out of the system and run with the on-board graphics, it's a great system!!! Except for the couple of other little complaints I got about it...but they wouldn't have the bottle necking of Data backing up on the freeway and when the congestion does gets threw, would be those spikes you got every so often. And then everything settles for a bit and it surges again!!! Wish I could have helped you more...but all I can say is live and learn!!! ACER is crap or should I say has gone to crap!!! I Laughed my ass off on that other system they were selling!!! 220W Power Supply!!!! LOL What the heck kind of deal did they pick those up for? $.50 each?
You had a good system if you only knew the abilities of changing things out!!! Really it's not that hard...but being a builder of systems, hey I run into my problems too changing up to different motherboards or figuring out some of the simple problems that are right in front of your face!!! But that's to bad you got rid of that, you had some good parts there for a making of a really good system but it would have cost a few $$ more, and who expects to pay more money when you buy a system and expect it to run correctly from the day you get it? Computers have gone from $1000 for a complete system down to $300 for a complete system...you know somebody is cutting cost somewhere and then they have "professionals" LOL, who tell you, that you don't know what your talking about because "We Know It's CRAP" but were not going to tell you about it, for your information "from them" you have a excellent state of the art system and you don't know what you're talking about!!! The whole thing is perfectly fine and runs "Perfect" when we plug it into the wall!!! Now take it back and onto the next sucker... :sarc: ooop's I mean "Customer." :roflmao:
Mark

 

[fredhoon]

pretty much fixed for me!!

Back on topic - specifically the Win7 & Audio driver / latency issues...

I've had some success with the popping & crackling issues with the wife's laptop. I previously tried all the different Realtek drivers with no dice (similar to others experiences) and went about disabling other hardware and checking the DPC Latency tool. As others have suggested the default MS audio drivers seemed better - I could almost remove the static by turning the quality down to 16bit 44MHz. I had a hunch that I was a little hasty in ruling out the Vista drivers (didn't uninstall the previous drivers properly), so I tried them again and was pretty stoked with the results.

The vista drivers experience no crackling, popping or DPC latency spikes except when streaming flash video through firefox in fullscreen (misc flash video players only, youtube is fine). As soon as the streaming video goes back to window the latency spikes stop. And this is only in Firefox, IE & Chrome don't experience the issue (I assume it is the way firefox handles flash video - fullscreen = 100% CPU on both 2.26GHz cores)

Games are a different story. Some are good, DoW2 Chaos Rising has all sorts of Audio issues causing sparodic lag - sometimes the game slows to a stuttery crawl, other times only the audio flips out. As this is my wifes laptop I don't game on it that often so have only really noticed the issue reappearing in the last few days as we have been away on holidays.


As far as I'm concerned the issue is 90% fixed for me. I note that others have tried Vista drivers (I'm using ver 6.0.1.5618) with no success where as others have similar success to me. I noticed an error in my system specs posted earlier and so have updated, I also threw an extra 2G of ram into the laptop (however the audio problem was *fixed* prior to this). The gaming PC with win7 Ultimate 64bit is using Realtek HD audio 7channel has never experienced an issue.

A few specs...

Sound Issues
Acer Aspire 6930G
Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit (no issues under Vista)
Realtek HD Sound (True5.1, Dolba, Tuba sub and all that crap)
Nvidia 9600M GT vidia, with nvidia HD audio over HDMI
Bluetooth Audio driver also installed.
Intel AGN Wireless
Atheros Gbit LAN

no issues
self built game PC
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit
DFI Lanparty UT T3RS motherboard
Realtek HD 7ch on-board sound
2x Gbit LAN

 

[AaronDude]

Well my four year old laptop with intel graphics can actually run games better than that machine that is supposed to be a multimedia powerhouse. I'm not saying it runs them well though at all. It's a gateway I got for 300 bucks refurbished. I think it was about the time Acer purchased gateway but I'm not sure it is an Acer. If it was an Acer it probably wouldn't have lasted this long.

Anyway I found a PS3 yesterday at a target after searching for a couple weeks. They are really hard to find right now because of a shortage. It does what I need it to like play music from my external USB hard drive and all the other stuff. I got to buy a blu ray game and some blu ray movies since I haven't tried that out yet. I would still use my laptop to do a lot of things though like load the hard drive with music so I can play it on my PS3 and surf the web. It's not really a computer replacement but it compliments the computer I have nicely. Hey, it appears to be well made and appears to run well so far.

Even though I lost on that acer I'm actually relieved I don't have to worry about it any more. Well, I might give windows 7 a shot another time in maybe three years once this gateway don't work no more. I at least now know it wasn't a windows 7 issue or linux issue for that matter. I'm sure for computers that are actually made to work windows 7 would be a beautiful OS. I'm not saying I like microsoft though, they still got me on a 350 zune that never worked right. Their software may be ok in some ways but they just don't know what they're doing when it comes to hardware.

 

[Dexterprog]

Does not only happen in Windows 7

Hey, guys. I came across this thread while googling the same problem. I am here not to tell you the solution (unfortunatelly) but to let you know that this is not an issue concerning ONLY Windows 7 as I am on Windows xp 64-bit and it's happening, and it also did happen on Windows xp 32-bit.

My guess is this is purely hardware related, not sure if it is software related. In my case it's very weird. When computer rebooted I get good DPC latencies, but upon some hours they start peaking and my audio gets raped. Even weirder is that when these spikes start showing up it gets directly related to internet (tried both my nforce 4 onboard LAN and my Realtek RTL8139 PCI ethernet card). I discovered this by having DPC latency checker opened and holding CTRL+F5 on a website in Firefox. When doing this I get 3000+ microseconds (us) of red spikes.

My next trial will be using a PCI-E ethernet card, but I am not sure if this will be more wasted money.

Concerning IRQs, my Realtek NIC is not sharing its number with anything. So not even being IRQ-isolated seems to solve the problem. I'm starting to think that the problem is more related to motherboards and their inner/onboard components more than the tipical onboard/external NICs, VGAs, etc.

Stuff that may produce spikes:

One thing that I am sure is that WIFI ethernet rapes DPC timmings. So if you have a WIFI card, open DPC latency checker and see if you get a lotta red spikes. Then disable the WIFI card and see if they go away. If they do: get rid of wireless internet.

Another thing causing this DPC latency checker is COMODO Firewall (this was already posted here) and AVAST antivirus. Not sure if any of those companies have fix the issue by now, nor do I care because I don't use their programs. I think it would be smart for us to list our Antivirus and Firewall programs (is applicable) so we can see if there is any similarities.
A third thing is supposed to be Nvidia powermize shit. Powermized underclocks your GPU when it is not being used. So, for example, if your VGA's clock speed is of 700mhz, when it is not used, powermize underclocks it to say 100mhz. This is done to save battery life and reduce GPU temperature. I've read in many places that this underclocking procerdure causes a long DPC call every time it takes place. To remove it you can use this free utility created just for doing that (well, it actually has some other features): http://nvgpupro.com/

You might as well disable Cool 'N' Quiet (or its equivalent for Intel) as it does the same as above producing pops and clicks (crackles) too. I wonder why companies do all this shit and not test it enough...

Sadly, I have to say that I tried all these things and none did the trick. Weirdly enought, when my computer starts getting "spikey" when using internet, if I disable my NICs (both, just in case), latency goes down, but STILL every now and then I get a red spike over 2000 microseconds and crackles are STILL audible. Exorcism does not sound like a bad idea after all...

I suggest we create a separate thread JUST for hardware comparison purposes (so 1 post per user, no replies of any type allowed) and use this thread for discussion. I think the best way would be to post full setup (CPU, motherboard, RAM, VGA, PCI devices, PCIE devices, IRQ configuration, etc), symptoms (e.g.: computer starts OK, spikes after a few hours, crackles, etc). I'm eager to create and organize that thread so that everyone follows the same posting scheme if you want me too.


I'm going to install Windows 7 x64 tomorrow on a new partition and nothing else but drivers and will let it run to see if the spikes show up again. That way we might be able to rule out software causing this

 

[Aphelion]

I recently dropped my DPC latency down to extremely low levels.

http://www.sevenforums.com/sound-audio/73543-dpc-latency.html

One thing I can definitely recommend doing, update your BIOS.

I have an Acer laptop (WinXP_Pro) and a Gigabyte mainboard Desktop (Win_7) and I've managed to get them both down to around approx 50us with no spikes.

The laptop serves as a portable studio and runs a Presonus Firestudio, it has a separate hardware profile that's easy enough to boot into. The laptop had one small spike left after disabling wireless, Ethernet, internal modem... it turned out to be the "Microsoft Battery Control Method", since I only ran powered when recording I disabled that as well.

The Desktop was always decent but improved after flashing the BIOS, I'd also disabled some services and I'm still checking to see if they or the BIOS upgrade caused the improvement.

Ap

 

[Barthelemy]

Hi,

I have same problem as all of you here. Crackling sound from time to time coming from the speakers.

The stunning thing I think is that I don't know yet wheter it's a software and hardware issue, ruling out one option would make it all much easier. I also wonder If We all experience the same issue, bit I doubt that as majority of people here have laptops 64-bit, I have desktop 32-bit and I have worked on it (with Win 7 installed) for over a year, then I had to reinstall OS (due to malicious software) and after that the problem occured. Only other thing I did beside reinstalling OS was changing slots of memory modules, so I thought It was something to do with them so I reverted to previous configuration, but I t didn't help. I also tested memory in Memtest86 under DOS, all seemed to be allright.

Concernign hardware.. I checked other speakers and the problem occured, I also installed temporarily Sound Blaster Audigy card without avail. Then I checked my speakers on 2nd desktop and they worked allright. I keep all the wires from each other in case interference is causing it.


The weirdest thing is that it happens randomly while I use foobar2000, Winamp or other media players, but I could play all day Dragon Age - Origins or other game (which I imagine eat up a lot of memory and CPU) and It never happens. I thought it might have been something to do with Windows Mixer so I installed WASAPI and Kernel streaming plugins in foobar2000, but nothing changed. It's just infuriating, I tackle with this problem for about two months I treid everything you guys posted here and all to no avail.

I post here a link to an image showing one of the memory modules which I though might be the culprit. It looks that It's slightly damaged but Memtest86 shows everything's allright. Please post your thoughts here, I know it's not hardware forum, but We'are trying to rule out every possibilty concerning the problem, don't We?

http://i42.tinypic.com/qrdcpc.jpg