Primordial Groove

No, I did not allow that. I am currently using dx9b but, this was an issue with dx9a also.

No plugins (other than game modules) were installed that I am aware of

Free Thinkr

Get 2000 or XP. ME is a terd.

AquaVita

Have you tried uninstalling the game?

emotional

Come on, you lot, don't you know how Windows works? The best solution to any Windows problem is reformat and reinstall.

scarmig

To be honest, it almost sounds like you have a bad connection somewhere. Maybe from the audio card to the speakers, or from the microphone to the audio card (if you have a mike), or from the CD player to the audio card (you didn't say what the source of the music is, CD, MP3, WAV or what).

Of course, if you're are playing from an MP3 and getting static, but playing from a CD does not... I'd say you probably have a CODEC problem. You might try uninstalling *all* media players, winamp, real player, quicktime, etc, and reinstalling them one at a time.

Also try some MP3's ripped at different resolutions. If you're ripping your own MP3's and having this problem, it could be a setting on your CD drive that is causing the static.

Primordial Groove

Not an option.

Surely it can be fixed without the drastic measures?

Connections are (seemingly) good. Very clean and making good contact. This issue happens with all sound, from any source, except for the various games I have. Although, the 'static' starts for a second or 2, it fades out as the game music kicks in. Very weird. This happens on all games. No microphone.

I have tried this option with no success. I will also add another bit of info. I notice when I play any music format through windows media player (for example), the music and the pretty graphics slow down. Like the system is processing other things and is therefore slowing down the pretty, funky graphics and music.

Yes.

Primordial Groove

Another thing I just noticed is that I dont have to double left click the media player app to get the static to stop. I can double click on the ii icon on the start bar (for this ie window) and the sound comes in crystal clear. Very strange.

EDIT: I just closed all programs except for for windows media player and explorer and I still get the static along with the slowing down of the music and video.

btw, Athlon 1.4, 512 mgs of Ram, 64m video card (ati) 60 gig drive, blah blah blah.

Thanks for the input so far.

Cofffee

I used to get random clicks and pops on both my Sound Blaster Live! and Audigy 1 cards. Updating the sound drivers to the latest versions helped a lot.

One thing that worked for me was lowering the audio acceleration setting. It's in the Control Panel under "Sounds and Multimedia", in the Audio tab, under the "Advanced" options for the Audio playback device, in the "Performance" tab. Set the Hardware acceleration a few notches lower and reboot and that may fix the problem.

Also, if you have a VIA-chipset motherboard, I suggest installing the latest 4in1 drivers, which will give you better PCI/AGP support.

Also, sometimes the problem can be due to a couple of devices sharing the same IRQ numbers (Sometimes this is okay, but sometimes the devices don't get along). You might want to try changing the PCI slot your sound card is in to try to change the IRQ it is using. You can get more information about the devices in your system under the Start menu | Programs | Accessories | System Tools | System Information.

Good luck!

Primordial Groove

Ok, its fixed. I uninstalled and reinstalled the video drivers.

what does my sound and video drivers have in common?

Also, thanks all for trying to help with this delima. I appreciate it.

Corona688

They both use the system bus for I/O and memory access. A faulty driver or an iffy chipset can cause these things to interfere with each other, perhaps writing to the wrong area of memory.