crackles on sound card when doing things in explorer

this is weird. If I go to explorer and start browsing around often my sound card will make loud "scratches" which are pretty scarey on 4412's. ^_^ Is that a video thing or is there some tweaking I can do.
Thanks so much.
Michael

I've seen this myself as well as people on the forum having the problem.  it's not always the same problem each time, or rather maybe it is and it manifests itself differently each time.  I suspect it's usually a grounding problem in the system somewhere, most likely somewhere on the motherboard or power supply itself which is not "economically fixable."

a quick thing to try is to reduce hardware acceleration on the video card.  that is done from in windows.  I don't see what OS you're using in your signature (you have everything else there! lol!), if you're running vista or win7 you can try disabling AERO which is what makes windows "look cool" but uses a lot of memory/video resources.

what video card do you have?  you can try reseating the video card and/or replacing it.  it's possible that something as simple as a capacitor on the video card has failed.

other simple things to try are updating your video card drivers, changing out your mouse, making sure your computer and (near field) monitors and soundcard (if applicable) are plugged into the same circuit so they share the same ground.

I hope some of those things work for you!

Karyn

Beagle


if you're running vista or win7 you can try disabling AERO which is what makes windows "look cool" but uses a lot of memory/video resources.

This is one of those urban myths.  Yes, aero makes windows "look cool" but it does it by unloading all the video processing from your CPU onto the graphics card.
 
By all means turn off individual effects such as window fade in/out, menu scrolling, etc, if you don't want them, but leave aero turned ON.
 
With aero turned off your graphics card beomes a dumb video output card and all screen processing/updates/ manipulation is done by your CPU.

where do i find those settings on windows 7 ??  is that what hardware exhilliration is?..and how do i adjust hard ware exhilleration..thank you.

To be honest, in Win7 I don't know if it can be turned off.

Vista introduced a host of fancy features to the desktop, such as the rollerdex effect for window selection, that relied on you having a reasonable graphics card with enough power to run them. MS realised that not everyone would have those cards and made the entire aero system switchable.   "Aero" is simply the name MS gave to all the visual enhancements which included the ability to offload the graphics processing onto the graphics card. Up untill then the only real "hardware acceleration" used by windows (not games) was the graphics memory.

With the introduction of Win7, even the cheapest graphics cards are capable of all but the most demanding of windows eye candy. (assuming you're not still using a 10 year old video card).

Not saying I know the answer to this, it could be a graphics driver/card monitor issue, mouse driver, wireless network card, hard drive issue (glitches caused by the audio being interrupted while the drive is accessed) - quite a list of things.
 
One thing worth checking is the the Windows event log to see if there are problems recorded regarding failed read/write or paging attempts. If Windows tries to access the disc and the initial attempt fails Windows then tends to make a lot of rapid retries which can grab loads of cpu and PCI bus attention. USB drives with their slow response can be a resource grabber as well.

A few questions, if you don't mind.

Do you only get the noises when running Sonar or at other times?
Are there noises only when playing audio or do you get them when no media application is running?
What's are the PC specs like?
Wireless or corded mouse?
Have you run a dpc latency checker (I suggest dpclat.exe from  http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml if you haven't got it) to check the bus latency while this problem is going on? It may help throw some light on what's happening.

tlw


Not saying I know the answer to this, it could be a graphics driver/card monitor issue, mouse driver, wireless network card, hard drive issue (glitches caused by the audio being interrupted while the drive is accessed) - quite a list of things.
 
One thing worth checking is the the Windows event log to see if there are problems recorded regarding failed read/write or paging attempts. If Windows tries to access the disc and the initial attempt fails Windows then tends to make a lot of rapid retries which can grab loads of cpu and PCI bus attention. USB drives with their slow response can be a resource grabber as well.

A few questions, if you don't mind.

Do you only get the noises when running Sonar or at other times?
Are there noises only when playing audio or do you get them when no media application is running?
What's are the PC specs like?
Wireless or corded mouse?
Have you run a dpc latency checker (I suggest dpclat.exe from  [link=http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml%3C/a%3E%3C/font%3E]http://www.thesycon.de/de...tml%3C/a%3E%3C/font%3E[/link] if you haven't got it) to check the bus latency while this problem is going on? It may help throw some light on what's happening.

Right now when I clicked reply to message I got the sound. I do not have Sonar open.
Wireless mouse.
Its an i7/for the CPU-2600--one of the latest--just came out this year/8gb ram.
I have not run a dpc latency check.
I have a good video card--my son builds my computers but I don't remember the name--but it is not quite the gaming type but close.
Thanks

Windows 7 Ultimate
 

oops--still crackling. I need to try some of the other fix-its.
Thanks everyone.

The link seems to work for me, but here it is again in the hope it works this time.

http://www.thesycon.de/deu/latency_check.shtml

If not, then just copy the link into your borwser's address bar and go from there.

High dpc latency isn't only a big cause of audio dropouts but can also cause all kinds of other strange happenings - including, I understand, noise when the mouse is moved.

As we know, tracking down the cause of high dpc latency "spikes" is a bit of a hit and miss process.
 
So is tracking down noise caused by mouse movement - or maybe it's noise caused by the graphics system when the cursor moves across the screen? It's the kind of problem that doesn't appear to have a single cause or a single obvious fix. I was plagued by it at one point - in the end it turned out that my LCD display was on the way out. Or rather, the display failed, I replaced it - and when I booted the mouse the noise problem had gone away. So I assume that was the cause. Other people seem to have had the same noise problem but solved it with completely different solutions. 

One idea - try disconnecting the mouse completely from the PC (best way is probably to disable it in system properties, wherever that is in Win7, so it's drivers don't load), reboot and see if using the tab and cursor keys to move the cursor around causes the crackles. Or try hooking up a spare wired mouse if you've got one handy and see what happens.

not doing it anymore--but Windows Media player/Youtube doesn't work either--so it must have had to do with disabling sounds. I have never quite got that one straight