Help with sound stutter/lag/speeding up?

[vonnieb]

Hi,
I hope someone can help cos I'm about to throw the damn computer out of the window.

My son's computer was prone to a problem with the sound where it would slow right down and then 'gallop' to catch up with its self.

I'd previously managed to solve the problem after following the advice on a tech forum and disabling something in windows.

Unfortunately I've lost the info on what to disable and after his computer developed a fault it had to be totally reformatted by a computer company. All the drivers were re-installed. As before there are no conflicts showing in the device manager so I'm at a loss as how to proceed.
The specs on the computer are:-
Processor:- AMD64 - Athlon X2 4800+
Motherboard:- Asrock AM2NF6G-VSTA
Memory:- 4GB Kingston DDR2 667mhz (4x 1GB)
Hard Drive:- 250GB S-ATA2 3.0Gb/s
Graphics:- NVidia GeForce 8600GT 256MB
PSU:- 400W
CD/DVD: 18x Double Layer DVD+/-RW
Sound:- Realtek ALC888 7.1 channel HD
OS:- Windows XP professional (SP2)

the correct Realtek drivers have been installed. I have tried uninstalling the drivers and letting windows install them upon reboot. Also tried uninstalling the windows HD audio under device manager as per suggestion from another user. All without success.

The sound starts fine but after a few seconds lags behind and then races to catch up as described above.

Any ideas? My son is desperate as he uses this for on line gaming and writing music etc for his band. Help? Anyone?

Vonnie

[vhex]

Vonnie,
Windows XP Pro SP2 only supports 2gb of ram. Could it be the sound card is experiancing memory addressing conflicts due to the extra memory?

[vonnieb]

Vonnie,
Windows XP Pro SP2 only supports 2gb of ram. Could it be the sound card is experiancing memory addressing conflicts due to the extra memory?

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestion. Just tried downgrading memory to 2GB but still have the same problem. Come to think of it, when we originally had the problem last time there was only 1gb of RAM installed.

Anyone else got any ideas? I know when I found the cure last time it was really stupidly easy to put right. Pity my brain didn't store the remedy - perhaps I could do with some more RAM too! :)